Woolchemy and BCNonwoven team up to scale wool-based hygiene materials
This collaboration represents an important milestone in bringing high-performance wool-based materials into scaled hygiene manufacturing, offering a sustainable alternative to the petroleum-derived textiles currently used in the industry.
NEW ZELAND – New Zealand’s Woolchemy has entered into a strategic collaboration agreement with BCNonwovens, a Spanish, family-owned manufacturer specializing in spunlace nonwoven materials for hygiene applications, for high-performance wool-based solutions.
Under this newly signed partnership, the two companies will work together to advance scale-up manufacturing of Woolchemy’s proprietary neweFlex™ platform and its application formats, including neweFlex™ ADL (Acquisition Distribution Layer) and neweFlex™ WIPE, which are designed for use across wipes, baby care, feminine hygiene, and incontinence products.
The partnership builds on a successful first manufacturing trial conducted at BCNonwovens, followed by additional testing and validation.
Woolchemy’s breakthrough technology uses 33-39 micron New Zealand coarse wool to create an eco-friendly, biodegradable composite material that can be manufactured and supplied by the roll to multinational companies marketing disposable nappy brands, with the thin, lightweight material offering multinationals a sustainable alternative.
The company’s commercially scalable process enables liquids to penetrate the outer cuticle of the wool fibre, creating newFibre, the world’s first hygiene-grade wool purified to meet stringent regulatory requirements of the disposable hygiene sector, after approximately nine years of optimization.
The wool-based materials demonstrate remarkable performance advantages over synthetic alternatives, including absorbency boosted to 10 times their weight while feeling dry and comfortable, 10% lower microclimate humidity compared to polypropylene alternatives, a 57% reduction in odours, including ammonia, and warmer, more stable temperature regulation in the diaper microclimate.
Derelee Potroz-Smith, CEO and co-founder of Woolchemy, stated, “BCNonwovens brings deep expertise in spunlace nonwovens and a highly capable manufacturing platform.”
“Together, we are focused on delivering wool- based materials like neweFlex™ at scale, while meeting the performance, quality, and regulatory expectations of the global hygiene industry.”
The company’s strategy focuses on collaborating with key pharmaceutical and fast-moving consumer goods companies to license intellectual property and supply sustainable non-woven textiles rather than competing for shelf space, and has already demonstrated the material’s fitness for purpose in a South American nappy factory producing 400 disposable nappies per minute.
Woolchemy’s groundbreaking neweFibre material was named winner of the IDEA Raw Material Achievement Award in May 2025, and the company previously secured a UUSD 1.5 million seed round along with USD 80,000 from the Ministry for Primary Industry’s Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures Fund to support commercial trials.
Sign up to receive our email newsletters with the latest news updates and insights from Africa and the World HERE.
