The combined efforts of European nonwovens producers to continue to achieve comparable performance with lower weight products are evident in the latest statistics from industry body EDANA.

Speaking at the recent Eurasia Nonwovens Symposium held in Istanbul from May 10-11, Jacques Prigneaux, EDANA’s Market Analysis and Economic Affairs director, said that while growth had stalled in 2009, the overall upward trend in the past two years was 17.3%.

Total nonwovens production in Greater Europe climbed 5.7% to a new record level of just under 1.9 million tons in 2011, representing some 55.7 billion square metres of product.