Texo AB, a member of TMAS, the Swedish textile machinery association, is currently seeing a surge in demand for its Compfelt weaving looms for press felt base fabrics.

Anders Svensson, President, Texo says, off-the-shelf industrial weaving machines generally range in their working widths from 1.9 to 3.2 metre, with those purpose-built for technical applications such as geotextiles extending to wider widths of six metres and beyond. Meanwhile, one of the machines we have recently successfully delivered and commissioned has a working width of 23 metres and is not even the widest of the many such machines the company has engineered and delivered worldwide since its formation.”

A second recently-delivered line has a more modest working width – in relative terms – of 13 meters. The demand for such machines comes from the suppliers of paper machine clothing (PMC) to paper mills, who in turn operate colossal machines for paper manufacturing.

The largest paper making machine is currently believed to be located on Hainan Island off the southern coast of China and is 428 meters long – roughly the length of four football pitches.

Naturally, such machines require equally large-scale components, which is where TEXO comes in.

All paper machines require a regular supply of PMC fabrics which are employed in three separate areas of the paper machine – the forming section, the press section and the drying section.

Texo Compfelt weaving machines are specifically employed for the production of endless (tubular) woven base fabrics for the press section of paper machines, where water is mechanically removed from the newly formed sheet of fibres. In the simplest press, the sheet is carried by the PMC fabric between two rolls, where water is squeezed out by the application of load and pressure. This can also be assisted by the use of vacuum and heat. The PMC fabrics here need to be replaced regularly, with a maximum lifespan of six months.