Latest news with #MaterialWorld
Yahoo
11-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Material World: Sparxell Spills Ink, Modern Meadow Moves Mercedes
Material World is a weekly roundup of innovations and ideas within the materials sector, covering news from emerging biomaterials and alternative leathers to sustainable substitutes and future-proof fibers. Sparxell and Positive Materials have joined forces. More from Sourcing Journal H&M's & Other Stories' Ocean-Inspired Drop Features Keel Labs' Seaweed-Based Fibers Three Material Innovators Unite on Biobased Mash Up Concept Shoe Turning Farm Leftovers into Fashion's Future The Cambridge-based color platform technology company announced the launch of its first textile ink (derived from its dye-free pigments) in partnership with the PDS Group's textile company. 'This textile ink launch transforms how brands can access our breakthrough technology. For too long, the textile industry had no choice other than to accept that vibrant colors meant environmental damage. Sparxell's bio-inspired technology shatters that assumption, delivering exceptional results from plant-based cellulose,' Benjamin Droguet, founder and CEO of Sparxell, said. 'This is just the beginning—our vision is to make bio-inspired color technology the new standard across fashion, proving that high performance and working in harmony with nature are perfectly aligned.' Sparxell's textile ink is 'available from the end of June,' with printing orders processed through Positive Materials. Partnership rollout includes an all-over printed cotton jersey featuring Sparxell's technology, available starting in September in European markets. The spin-out startup's textile ink yokes the same structural color principles found in Morpho butterfly wings, 'engineering plant-based cellulose at the microscale to create vibrant colors through light manipulation rather than chemical formulas.' Positive Materials supports the validation and scale-up of Sparxell's breakthrough, the partners said, by integrating it into its existing production infrastructure—delivering the manufacturing expertise and operational capacity needed to take the technology from prototype to production-ready. On Sparxell's side, the team can then scale production alongside maintaining sustainability standards during the manufacturing process. 'Rather than requiring custom development projects, fashion designers and procurement teams can now order the most sustainable colorant options out there as easily as conventional alternatives, but with the added benefit of containing 100 percent biodegradable pigments that are free from toxic chemicals,' Elsa Parente, co-CEO and CTO of Positive Materials, said. 'Our collaboration with Sparxell represents exactly the kind of innovation the textile industry needs, aligning perfectly with our mission to create low-impact textiles that don't compromise on performance.' The launch builds on Sparxell's recent commercial momentum, including a nearly $2 million grant from the European Innovation Council and participation in LVMH's La Maison des Startups accelerator program. Spiber has landed a few new partners ahead of the trade show summer season, as Japanese biotech venture company announced its partnerships with Manifattura Sesia and Achille Pinto. Known for adopting responsible materials and providing refined quality, the Manifattura Sesia partnership yielded yarn blends containing 30 percent Brewed Protein fiber combined with wool. The Italian knitwear producer developed three variations of its T-Gen yarn—short for 'technological generation yarns.' The resulting material is soft to the touch and weighs less than pure wool. 'The combination of Spiber's Brewed Protein fiber with a selection of Superfine Merino Wool certified RWS and Nativa makes these yarns a cutting-edge example in our search for sustainable textile solutions,' said Chiara Serra, creative director of Manifattura Sesia. 'T-Gen represents another milestone in the path that Manifattura Sesia started years ago: creating ever more responsible yarns, with a quality designed to stand the test of time.' Spiber's partnership with Achille Pinto—an Italian premium mill known for its high-detail jacquards and printed textiles—has resulted in new collections containing 15–30 percent Brewed Protein fiber blended with silk and wool. 'These are the first and only textiles in Europe to combine Brewed Protein fiber with silk,' Spiber said. 'Moreover, Achille Pinto is the first European manufacturer to demonstrate printing capabilities on Brewed Protein fabrics.' Zegna Baruffa Lane Borgosesia (ZBLB) developed two brewed yarns, combining the properties of Brewed Protein fiber with ZBLB's expertise in spinning and finishing merino wool. The company offers a variety of colors with 30 percent Brewed Protein fiber and 70 percent RWS wool as well. In addition, Botto Giuseppe renewed its 100 percent Brewed Protein yarn from the previous season and remains the only mill in Europe currently offering the entirely worsted yarn. Marzotto Group has renewed its textile collection 'FiberPro' from the previous season with 30 percent Brewed Protein blend fabrics and will present five new tailoring qualities. Japanese fiber distributor Takisada-Nagoya, meanwhile, will unveil over 20 new fabric collections. All new developments and samples will be on display at Spiber's booths at Pitti Filati and Milano Unica. Modern Meadow has entered a development partnership with Mercedes-Benz. The German luxury automotive brand leveraged the New Jersey-based biofabrication company's Innovera to develop a bio-design leather alternative for Mercedes' technology program, Concept AMG GT XX. Ideally, the partnership will further develop Modern Meadow's Innovera for series production and, ultimately, set a new standard in vehicle interiors. 'In our development partnership with Mercedes-Benz, we have used Innovera to create a new luxury leather alternative without sacrificing aesthetics, versatility and texture,' said CEO David Williamson. 'It looks and feels as good as it performs.' Innovera achieves more than 80 percent renewable carbon content and is completely animal-free. It requires no 'special preservation' or storage conditions—reducing complexity and costs—and is adaptable to any standard manufacturing process. The leather alternative consists of a combination of chemically recycled AMG GT3 racing car tires, plant-based proteins and biopolymers. In the Concept AMG GT XX, one scrap tire provides the basis for about four square meters of Innovera. The black seat pads of the bucket seats are covered with the Nappa-look variant. The bio-design means the leather alternative is breathable, waterproof and lighter than traditional materials, of which its maximum tensile strength is twice as high. With these properties, Modern Meadow said the material represents the 'new dimension of performance,' which the technology program stands for in the vehicle's interior. Modern Meadow's bio-design technology used to create this leather alternative included recycled racing tires that were used in 'tough competition' on AMG GT3 customer racing cars as well. Balena and Stella McCartney's partnership has hit the market. 'I mean this is insane. My shoe designer came up to me and said, 'smell the sole.' It's made of cinnamon waste. It smells of cinnamon,' Stella McCartney said in a statement. 'And it's basically 100 percent plant based, recyclable and biodegradable textile. It's a closed-loop production, so it ensures completely zero waste. It is mind-blowing.' The next-gen material science company's innovative material, BioCir Flex, is featured in the sustainable designer's 'highly anticipated' S-Wave Sport trainers for McCartney's autumn 2025 collection. Balena's BioCir Flex is a non-toxic, compostable, recyclable and biobased alternative to traditional plastics. BioCir Flex absorbs impact, responds to motion, is as durable as TPU and as flexible as rubber. It's dyed with natural cinnamon, too. 'This collaboration represents more than just a partnership, it's a shared commitment to shaping a future where materials are truly circular, sustainable, and high-performance,' said David Roubach, founder and CEO of Balena Science. 'Seeing BioCir Flex brought to life in a Stella McCartney design, and now available for consumers worldwide, is a milestone I could only dream of when we began this journey. Stella has long been a beacon of responsibility and innovation in fashion, and we're proud to help push the industry forward together.'
Yahoo
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Material World: Decathlon Runs with Rheon, Spiber Goes Dutch in Paris
Material World is a weekly roundup of innovations and ideas within the materials sector, covering news from emerging biomaterials and alternative leathers to sustainable substitutes and future-proof fibers. Spiber and Dutch high fashion designer Iris Van Herpen brought science and style to Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week Autumn/Winter 2025. Both collaborators take inspiration straight from the source: nature (they were both founded in 2007, too). While Van Herpen channels the natural world's forms and rhythms for her designs, Spiber looks to protective efforts—like silk cocoons and spider webs—to engineer new proteins. 'Biomimicry is ever-present in Spiber's approach and that is truly similar to our own methods,' Van Herpen said. 'Fusing the organic with the innovative, recreating nature's way of making a material, starting with a protein.' Spiber translated this complex technology to meet designer needs and create something truly wearable; something the futuristic designer said is a rare quality. 'At Spiber, we believe in the expressive power of materials—their ability to tell stories, to inspire emotion, and to redefine our relationship with nature,' said Kazuhide Sekiyama, Spiber's co-founder and representative executive officer. 'Working with Iris Van Herpen, whose designs go beyond the physical to evoke the beauty of life's complexity, has resulted in an extraordinary manifestation of our mutual values.' The Japanese biotech company's engineered protein formed the foundation of the haute couture bridal look, which comprised sheer organza cut in 'gradient-sized moon-shapes' and heat-bonded to the laser cut Brewed Protein fabric boning, the partners said, before 'hundreds of white coral petals' were stitched upward onto a nude illusion tulle, spiraling down into a transcalent, or heat-permeable, twisted train. 'I feel Brewed Protein fiber brings a lightness and a softness that I'm looking for, resulting in fabric that floats around the skin. It has a very attractive, organic, natural presence that's embodied in the whole look,' Van Herpen said. 'The Spiber team and I share the same attention to detail and texture—the sensorial qualities of the material.' The feeling was mutual. With a shared ambition to keep pushing material boundaries, the teams also believe cross-disciplinary collaboration is 'essential' to address the complex challenges facing fashion and the environment. 'Brewed Protein was born from the same curiosity that drives Iris's work: a desire to explore the boundaries of what is possible when we look to nature for questions, without focusing solely on answers,' Sekiyama said. 'This collaboration reflects a vision of fashion that is both sensorial and systemic, where fabrics are not just worn, but experienced—and where innovation arises from a deep sensitivity and curiosity toward the living world.' More from Sourcing Journal Chain Reaction: Asendia's Hendrick Kummeling on Why Strategic Flexibility is the Best Defense Against the Uncontrollable Is Warehouse Robotics' Future Shaped Like a Human? Adobe Projects 3,200% Increase in Gen AI Traffic During Amazon Prime Day Event Forestry cooperative Södra is combining artificial intelligence and automated data with nascent working methods to keep members in the loop with an updated forest management plan toolkit. The largest forest-owner association in Sweden partnered with AI company Terra Labs to launch the initiative. 'We are now on the brink of a technological leap that will give us access to automated forestry data in a new way,' said Peter Karlsson, head of Södra Skog. 'Empowering our members in their forest ownership and decision-making is a key part of our mission and we aim to create even better decision support for forest owners.' That breakthrough includes streamlining efforts using automated forestry data to reduce the need for field measurements, among other efficiencies. Södra is developing its own Planner App, used on a tablet in conjunction with new remote sensing data, the company said. To do so—aka develop planners' tools using remote sensing and 'next-generation AI' technology—Södra tapped the Swedish startup that inventories and analyses forests, in real-time, to enable the industry's next significant tech shift. The long-term partnership will ensure 'stable access to highly accurate and frequently updated data,' the joint development said, with collaborative efforts to adapt and train the AI model now ongoing for several months. More specifically, Terra Labs 'develops software using satellite data and AI for monitoring and analyzing land and related activities from a spatial viewpoint,' according to Crunchbase. The platform also reported that Terra Labs received seed backing from Norrsken VC, a European impact investor that participated in Syre's $100 million Series A funding round in May 2024. 'We've contributed various perspectives to the development process and have now found solutions that provide us with very high-quality forest information,' Karlsson said. 'We are leading the market here and will soon be able to offer Södra's members the best possible information about their forests, which we hope will enhance the member experience.' The app for forest planners is expected to launch this fall. In parallel, the forest management plan will be developed as a product. Ideally, Södra will make more information accessible via Min skogsgård, the OnceMore developer's membership portal that roughly translates to 'my forest farm.' In turn, users can plan with the reportedly dynamic tools that will give members 'greater opportunities to actively engage' with forest management plans. Global sports brand Decathlon has partnered with British materials technology company Rheon Labs to bring advanced material science to the everyday athlete. 'Decathlon's belief that innovation should serve everyone aligns perfectly with our own,' Stephen Bates, CEO at Rheon Labs, said. 'Rheon started in elite sport; now, this partnership will unlock that same level of performance for millions more.' The collaboration equips the sporting goods retailer with access to Rheon's full technology platform—including current and future efforts in strain-rate sensitive materials—to develop apparel that bolsters control, comfort and performance during physical activity. Strain-rate sensitive means that Rheon's patented polymer strands remain soft and flexible during everyday movement but stiffen up in response to impact. 'Innovation truly matters when it empowers everyone,' said Aurelien Corbier, Decathlon's textile innovation leader. 'By partnering with Rheon Labs, we're taking materials designed for athletes and making them accessible to all. This aligns perfectly with our focus on providing excellent products for everyone, leading to better comfort, control and performance.' The partnership's first project, a Kiprun running tight, was designed to focus on energy and reduce muscle movement. Additional developments are underway across other categories, with the first few technologies set to drop in 2026. Portuguese cellulosic pulp producer Altri will acquire a majority stake in AeoniQ, a Swiss-based cleantech spin-off of HeiQ Materials. In turn, the partners will build a commercial-scale plant to produce the 'climate-positive' cellulosic yarn. Altri's investment, including a capital increase, will build out the commercial-scale AeoniQ production capacity, in line with the spin-out's desire to diversify into high-value, low-impact cellulosic applications. 'This agreement gives concrete form to Altri's strategy of moving up the value chain and investing in next-generation materials,' said José Soares de Pina, CEO of Altri. 'We are scaling a game-changing innovation that aligns perfectly with our commitment to build a more renewable world.' Per that agreement, the industrial plant will be constructed at Altri's Caima dissolving pulp mill in Constancia, Santarem. Construction is expected to begin in 2026 with an initial capacity of 1.750 tons per year. On top of the already-existing pilot lines in Austria, a pre-industrial plant in Portugal is expected to launch in early 2026 to accelerate prototyping, partnerships and capsule collections. Hugo Boss has used AeoniQ's yarn in four capsule collections, while Lameirinho's 'vegan silk' bed linen line was presented at Heimtextil 2025. The venture will 'benefit from the vertical integration of eucalyptus-based pulp to finished yarn,' the duo said, before later expanding to incorporate recycled feedstocks, considering inputs like cotton textiles waste and agricultural waste as well as bacterial cellulose derived from food waste. 'Altri's investment transforms AeoniQ from a market-proven innovation into a full-scale global production platform. Together, we are offering a market-ready solution to one of the planet's most polluting industries: Textiles,' Carlo Centonze, CEO of HeiQ, said. 'The joint venture brings together Altri's industrial expertise and HeiQ's innovation prowess to deliver a European-made, sustainable, high performance and plastic-free textile.' The acquisition's completion is subject to the fulfillment of closing conditions, as is standard in transactions of this nature, the strategic partners said, with expectations to wrap up the process during 2025's third quarter. Flexible carbon fiber composites company Carbitex collaborated with Hypetex Coloured Advanced Materials (CAM) on a new generation of production-ready colored composites. 'While we've explored colorization in the past, our core expertise lies in engineering flexibility. By working with Hypetex CAM, we get the best in color while focusing on continuing to evolve our technology. The request for color is a regular occurrence, but we wanted to wait until we knew we had a solution that met our quality expectations—Hypetex does that,' said Junus Khan, founder and president of Carbitex. 'OmniFlex with Hypetex colored carbon is striking and beautiful. This collaboration will expand our material offerings into compelling new product ranges.' The collaboration debuts with Carbitex's carbon fiber textile technology that helps athletes harness the high tensile strength and no-stretch characteristics of carbon fiber in a flexible and lightweight form. For the first time, Carbitex's technology is available in colorways other than traditional black, including shades of Oak Twill and Titanium Twill, among six other distinctive options. The Hypetex colored OmniFlex materials are available now, intended for integration with products in sport and lifestyle segments, with inaugural efforts in the travel and accessory categories on the horizon.
Sydney Morning Herald
20-06-2025
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
The battleground for Iran's last stand could hold the world to ransom
Visiting an oil refinery is nothing if not bewildering. It's a cat's cradle of dials and valves and spigots and pipes, fat and thin, some spewing steam; of towering columns and multi-storey cylinders, one topped with that iconic flickering plume of flame. Yet, despite its vast complexity, a refinery is a machine built to do one thing: in this case, to pump oil from tankers berthed at a jetty on its seaward side and pass it through its web of hissing conduits to be boiled, sifted, blended and tested until what emerges are batches of diesel, jet fuel and various grades of unleaded petrol. This is the Viva Energy (formerly Shell) refinery, just outside Geelong on Victoria's Corio Bay. It's one of just two such facilities still operating in Australia and a survivor from the 1950s, albeit updated with mission-control flat-screens and increasingly sophisticated processes. This other-worldly place is a major contributor to how we consume petrol in Australia, yet it is still just a tiny piece of the global picture. While Viva Energy refines some oil here, most of our fuel comes from overseas. And its famously volatile price is largely determined by forces out of our control – both economic and geopolitical – in Singapore, the Middle East and beyond. Embargoes, terrorism and wars can all affect the oil price – which has surged since Israel attacked energy facilities in Iran and destroyed much of the regime's military command in recent days. Now, with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei promising 'irreparable damage' to the US if it intervenes to support its ally Israel, there are fears he may look for leverage in another way: by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow choke point at the mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a third of the world's oil is shipped. How would they do it? And what might it mean for petrol prices in Australia? First, where does petrol come from? The sticky brown or black goop created over millions of years from compressed, decomposed algae and plankton on seabeds is something humans have known about for most of our history. In many places, oil used to just bubble out of the ground, as author Ed Conway notes in his book Material World, in which he analyses the necessity to civilisation of six key resources (oil being one). The ancient Egyptians originally took bitumen from tar pits to help embalm their dead; elsewhere it was used to waterproof the bottoms of boats. But it wasn't until 1853, writes Conway, that chemists figured out how to process oil into a liquid that would burn strongly: kerosene. Cue a worldwide rush to discover sources of 'black gold' to light our world. Today, of course, petrol, diesel and other products refined from oil continue to dominate everyday life, despite the trend towards renewables. Scots and Norwegians pump oil from the depths of the North Sea; Texans from the ancient Permian Basin; the Russians in western Siberia; and the Saudis from the world's largest single deposit, the vast Ghawar field, which produces some 3.8 million barrels of oil a day – enough to fill 242 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Worldwide, in 2025 we are on track to consume nearly 105 million barrels daily. That's about 6600 pools' worth. 'How the world works right now,' Conway tells us from the UK, 'is we're still reliant on fossil fuels for about 80 per cent of all of our total primary energy'. As it's organic, oil is not a uniform product. It can be light or heavy, 'sweet' or 'sour'. Oil literally tastes more or less sweet depending on its sulphur content, a component of the algae and plankton that made it in the first place. Sulphur is a pollutant when burned in vehicles. While one tanker-load of crude oil can vary greatly from the next, crude oil is still typically traded across just a handful of benchmarks, or reference points for prices. The best known, Brent crude, takes its name from Scotland's offshore Brent Oilfield, named after the brant or brent goose (pictured below) when it was discovered in the East Shetland Basin in 1971. West Texas Intermediate, or Texas Sweet Light, is not a mid-strength ale but rather a benchmark for oil produced in the US, priced at the crude oil trading hub of Cushing, Oklahoma – the self-proclaimed 'pipeline crossroads of the world'. The prices of Dubai crude and Oman crude are often averaged to create a benchmark for pricing crude oil shipped from the Middle East to Asia. To turn it into usable petrol (and other products such as diesel and kerosene), refineries separate crude into its different components by pumping it through a vast network of furnaces, distilling tanks and pressure vessels. The crude is first heated and distilled, the lightest parts (such as the hydrocarbons that go on to form petrol) floating to the top and the heaviest (such as the components of heavy fuel oil) sinking to the bottom. The next step is typically a method called 'cracking', using a rocket-shaped tower of a machine that employs heat, pressure and catalysts to turn less-valuable heavy hydrocarbon molecules into higher-value lighter ones. The final stage is to combine the different streams of petrol that emerge from these various processes, like a winemaker blending from different vats, to ensure the product that will come out of the pump has the correct characteristics, such as its octane level (in Australia that's usually 95 or 98). Who controls the world's oil supply? While there are dozens of oil-producing countries – the US, Norway, Britain and Malaysia among them – the cartel now known as OPEC+ holds the most sway over supply. Its members have about three-quarters of the world's total known crude oil reserves and produce some 40 per cent of the world's crude. Originally a group of five oil-rich nations – Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela – the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, collaborated to, essentially, seize control of production back from a cartel of seven British and US companies known as the Seven Sisters. By 1975, OPEC had expanded to 13 nations including Nigeria and Algeria. In 2016, it was joined by an alliance of more oil-producing nations, including the world's third-biggest oil extractor, Russia, to create OPEC+. Historically, OPEC has had little hesitation in manipulating supply. 'By acting in a cartel manner, they're able to exercise monopoly power [to] impact the price of oil on global markets,' says macroeconomist Robert Walker, a research fellow at international affairs think tank the Lowy Institute. Within OPEC, the group's single-biggest producer, Saudi Arabia, is the major player. Critically, says Ed Conway, 'they still are able to actually get oil out of the ground and increase their output faster than pretty much any other country in the world — which can influence the global market'. Agility in production is one thing, getting the oil out to other markets beyond the Middle East is another. How could the Iran-Israel conflict affect petrol prices? So far, Israel's attacks appear to have targeted Iran's domestic oil and gas supply chains rather than its exports. Israeli airstrikes, for example, have hit Iran's Shahr Rey refinery in Tehran's south (which churns out 250,000 barrels of oil a day), the Abadan refinery near the Persian Gulf coast (400,000 barrels a day) and the Shahran oil depot, north of Tehran. About half of Iran's oil production goes towards its domestic needs. But one reason markets are on edge, says Shane Oliver, chief economist at AMP, is that Israel didn't attack any Iranian oil facilities at all during strikes in April and October last year (an escalation after years of shadow aggression between the two nations), yet 'this time they have actually attacked them'. The West Texas Intermediate and the Brent Index rose 7 per cent immediately after Israel launched its recent attacks. Loading What if Israel were to target Iran's oil exports? In 2022, Iran's mineral fuels, oils and distillation products accounted for more than half of its total exports. (Most of its trade is with countries such as China and Iraq, which operate outside US and European Union sanctions on Iran.) Iran's oil exports make up just a fraction of global supply – about 4 per cent. 'India and other countries are buying oil from Iran so if they can't get their oil from Iran, then they go onto the world market and push up the price,' says Oliver. Yet the impact would be negligible, he says, as surpluses of oil in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates could make up for the shortfall. Of greater concern is how Iran could disrupt the transit of oil. A third of the world's traded crude oil is shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passage near Iran that separates the Persian Gulf from the Arabian Sea and the wider world. In May, according to Lloyd's List, nearly 518 million barrels of crude oil were transported through the strait, which is less than 40 kilometres wide at its narrowest and has two shipping lanes about three kilometres wide in each direction. If a chokepoint such as this becomes dangerous – as has the Bab al-Mandab Strait in recent times as Houthi militias attack commercial vessels, leading to a steep drop in the number of ships transiting there – or if it is effectively shut, trade has to reroute. Most of the ships that would have gone through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, in order to get into the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal, now ply their way around the southern tip of Africa instead. The Saudis and UAE both have limited workarounds for the Strait of Hormuz: a Saudi pipeline to a Red Sea terminal means some shipments could get to Europe, the UAE has a pipeline from its oilfields to the Gulf of Oman. Iran has an export terminal at the eastern end of the strait, too, reports Bloomberg. Other nations, such as Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, rely entirely on the strait to ship their oil. Iran, which is on the strait's northern shores, could accomplish a blockade by laying mines or harassing commercial vessels with its naval boats, which include speedboats. A day after Israel's initial attack, Iranian general Esmail Kosari said Tehran was reviewing whether to close the strait. This would cause 'a major impact on oil supplies', says Oliver, 'simply because those countries with the spare capacity would be affected by the blockage, like Saudi Arabia and UAE.' Oil is already trading at a five-month high because of the threat to supply; even the threat of closing the strait has had an effect; the cost of chartering a large tanker to move oil from the Middle East rose by as much as 20 per cent when the conflict broke out, according to Reuters. It's not the first time oil markets have faced such a threat. In the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq War, the two sides attacked 451 vessels between them, in what became known as the Tanker War. The strait was not closed then, though, partly because of US threats to intervene if it was – the US Navy escorted tankers through the Gulf. This time around, Iran would be reluctant again to provoke the US to directly join the conflict. So far, shipping is in a 'wait and watch' mode, reports Lloyd's List, although tankers waiting to load up in Iran are staying at greater distance from ports, something Iran has requested. Indeed, some analysts this past week have said there's no cause for alarm, at least with respect to oil prices. JP Morgan's commodities team has put a 17 per cent possibility on a worst-case scenario 'where supply impact extends beyond the reduction in Iranian oil exports and price reaction is exponential'. 'Historically, Iran has refrained from closing the passageway, likely indicating a preference to avoid escalating numerous conflicts from hybrid warfare into full-blown war,' they noted in a briefing shared with us. Still, Iran could use the possibility of blocking the strait as a 'blackmail tool', warns Joaquin Vespignani, an associate professor of macroeconomics at the University of Tasmania. 'If they just keep moving, for example, military forces to this area, that will cause Israel to attack this area or close to it,' says Vespignani, who has studied previous oil price shocks. 'That is the big concern – it doesn't really have to be blocked to feel the effect. If the war moves to this area, even if the channel is not blocked, there will be some consequences.' What could be the impact for Australia? For as long as we've known its importance, oil has not only fuelled wars but sparked them, as Daniel Yergin writes in his encyclopaedic analysis The Prize. Oil played a fundamental role in both world wars, he writes, not to mention the later Suez Crisis of 1956 when Britain and France saw shipments of oil as one of the key strategic reasons for the canal remaining open. The first 'oil crisis' that saw petrol prices significantly spike worldwide was in 1973 when Arab oil-producing nations embargoed the US and other countries who had supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War, causing prices to soar by 400 per cent - cue queues at the bowser and a rush towards more fuel-efficient vehicles. Another crisis came after the 1979 Iranian revolution, when fear ripped through markets that the social upheaval could spread to the region's other oil-rich nations. In 1990, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait – a fellow OPEC member – triggered the first Gulf War and brought on a 'mini oil shock' that lasted nine months and contributed to a recession in the US. Loading 'In Australia, given that 90 per cent of our oil consumption – petrol and diesel and all sorts of things – come from overseas we are vulnerable to any international crisis that may affect us, directly or indirectly,' says associate professor Flavio Macau, a logistics expert at Perth's Edith Cowan University. 'At the end of the day, we're an island. Everything must come by sea.' While we do have our own limited oil reserves, mostly in Western Australia, and the two refineries – Viva Energy's and Ampol's Lytton plant in Brisbane – ultimately we have to compete with imports on price. But Australian prices today are also heavily influenced by three other factors: the strength of the US dollar, the margins that overseas refineries make and the wholesale benchmark in Singapore. The dollar matters because oil trades are made in US dollars. Australia's dollar is currently about 65 cents to the US dollar. Refiners are turning a 'crude' substance into any number of other products including petrol and diesel. Singapore matters as our dominant regional supplier, home to three major refineries, including one of the largest plants owned by multinational giant ExxonMobil – one of many petrochemical companies that now sprawl over the city-state's Jurong Island. Because of the volume coming out of Singapore, Australian wholesale prices for petrol are not so much pegged to the price of crude as they are to a Singapore benchmark known as Singapore Mogas 95 Unleaded, or Mogas 95 for short. Loading Says Shane Oliver: 'If you look at the correlation between global oil prices and Australian petrol prices, the $12-a-barrel rise in oil prices so far this month, including the rise since the attacks, could translate to about 12 cents a litre in petrol prices. That's a very rough rule of thumb but, obviously, it will gradually filter through as oil goes through the refinery process, including in Singapore, and then eventually shows up to the bowser in Australia.' It takes weeks for any disruption of oil supply to impact Australian motorists, says Joaquin Vespignani at UTas. Hidden costs can include insurance premiums on cargo travelling through dangerous waters; and fuel for transporting food to stores, says Vespignani. There's yet another factor that influences what we pay at the pump: the all-important and often mysterious 'retail price cycle'. What's the retail price cycle? Glance at fuel prices leading into a long weekend and it can be tempting to think service stations hike up the prices when more motorists get on the road. Nevertheless, this is not actually the case, says the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which has found that any price increases on public holidays are no larger than at other times of the year. Instead, it is fierce competition among service stations that drives prices to fall then rise over an average of five weeks in most Australian capital cities, before the cycle starts again – a game of discount leapfrog. Economists call it an Edgeworth cycle (named for the economist who described it, in the 1920s). 'I started high, I wanted to take volume off you so I dropped by a cent, and you saw what I was doing so you dropped by a cent,' explains Mark McKenzie, chief executive of the Australasian Convenience and Petroleum Markets Association. The prices eventually fall low enough to be unsustainable, at least for some. 'It's a bit like looking at each other around the poker table and trying to work out who is going to move first,' says McKenzie. Generally, it's the larger-volume businesses potentially exposed to bigger losses that will blink and up prices. Average prices can move by up to 45 cents from trough to peak. 'It's not perfectly competitive but it's not bad,' says behavioural economist Professor Ralph-Christopher Bayer of Adelaide University. 'It's not that they're really able to have huge margins.' Loading In Western Australia, regulation requires fuel prices to be locked in for 24 hours from 6am each day, which has contributed to a seven-day fuel cycle in Perth, where prices are typically lowest on a Tuesday. McKenzie says a common misconception is that service stations collude over when to put up prices. The 8130 service stations in Australia are managed by around 3500 different businesses. 'Individual businesses are making decisions about when they go up,' he says. The margin on regular unleaded fuel is wafer thin. More than half of pump prices come from production costs, another 31 per cent is government tax, and 11 per cent is industry operating costs and margins, according to the Australian Institute of Petroleum. McKenzie says service stations on average make about 2.8 cents a litre on regular unleaded fuel. 'They get a better margin on the premium graded product,' he says, which can increase margins up to four cents per litre. Fuel remains a service station's main profit source because of the sheer volume sold, but it's no industry secret they make bigger margins on non-fuel items – chocolate bars, drinks. 'If I lose you because I've made a silly decision on pricing,' says McKenzie, 'it's a double banger because I don't just lose the fuel, I lose the opportunity to sell the non-fuel products.' Oil's heyday is not over yet. Indeed, the notion of 'peak oil' supply, which once implied a plunge into Middle Ages darkness, has become more complicated with the discovery of new deposits and technologies and the need to ensure continued supplies as new types of energy come online. Says Ed Conway: 'We're trying to compress a kind of period of innovation that when you look back at previous energy transitions would have taken probably a century, if not longer.'
Washington Post
17-06-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
Trump's tariffs are running up against the limits of nature
Ed Conway is a journalist for Sky News and author of 'Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization.' There is, on the face of it, a clear logic behind President Donald Trump's decision this month to raise the tariff on imported aluminum from 25 percent to 50 percent. He thinks the United States is too dependent on imports and that China is too dominant in the production of this essential metal. In theory, a tariff might spark renewed production in the U.S. Unfortunately for Trump's ambitions, the deeper you delve into the weird and wonderful world of aluminum, the more you realize there are physical limits that make a resurgence of U.S. production unlikely. Raw supply isn't the problem. There is more aluminum in the Earth's crust than any other metal. But finding a way of extracting it and turning it into a usable form was something we achieved surprisingly recently. Until then, it was the most valuable metal on the planet. In the mid-19th century, aluminum was so prized, it was worth more than its weight in gold. Napoleon III liked to impress his guests at banquets by swapping the standard gold plates with aluminum ones. When the Washington Monument was capped in aluminum in 1884, that little capstone was the single biggest piece of aluminum in the world. What changed, a couple of years later, was the discovery of how to smelt aluminum in vast quantities using a form of electrolysis. The Hall-Héroult process, as it was called after its two inventors, transformed the world forever. All of a sudden, aluminum — far lighter than most other metals, not to mention more resistant to the kind of corrosion that plagues iron — was no longer confined to places like Napoleon III's banquet hall. It was thanks to this process that the Wright brothers were able to lift their plane off the ground at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903 with an engine made of aluminum. It is thanks to abundant aluminum that we have powered flight today, not to mention the power lines that provide most of the world's electricity, the bodies of many modern cars and the physical editions of newspapers, which are produced on printing plates made of, yes, aluminum. Aluminum is still produced more or less the same way today, using an electrolytic reaction that consumes enormous amounts of power. This metal is almost better thought of as a sort of battery — the product not just of rocks and ores from the ground but of inordinate amounts of electricity. But it's not just power that's needed but continuous power. Unlike many other factories in the industrial world, you can't easily turn aluminum plants off and on. A stoppage of just a few hours can cause molten metal to freeze, doing permanent damage to the entire production line. During World War II, the Nazis targeted Scotland's Fort William smelter in the vain hope of causing an interruption that would disable the plant — and British airplane production — for the long haul. At this stage, you're perhaps wondering what relevance all this history has for 2025. The short answer is: rather a lot. Why is most of North America's aluminum smelted in Canada? Because that's where most of the hydroelectric plants are. Unlike gas-fired power stations, which tend to ramp up and down their output depending on prices, hydro plants usually provide the constant flow of power necessary for an uninterruptible customer such as an aluminum smelter. And the U.S. doesn't have many obvious locations for new ones. Now, in theory, the U.S. could still find ways to smelt more aluminum, especially if tariffs stay in place for years. And certainly, part of the reason many developed countries have scaled down their aluminum production is because China has scaled up so much in recent years, reducing the global price and making it ever harder to compete. That is a global problem with global consequences, felt across Europe as well as the Americas. But there are three important catches to ramping up U.S. production. The first is that investors are understandably nervous that the president might change his mind about the tariffs at any moment (thus obliterating the business case for a new smelter). The second is that it takes years to build these plants and connect them to the power grid, so even in the event that someone is brave enough to build a new one, American businesses and consumers will still have to fall back on imported aluminum — and more expensive cars, planes and everything else — for some time. The third catch is that it's not altogether obvious that smelting more aluminum is in the best interests of the United States anyway. The key issue here is that aluminum production sucks up power that might be useful elsewhere. Thanks to abundant shale oil and gas, the U.S. has plenty of energy at its disposal. Should it crack the nut of building nuclear power plants cheaply in the coming years, that would provide a new source of reliable power that's well-suited for aluminum smelting. But the U.S. also faces surging demand for more energy, much of which is coming from strategic industries that Washington also wants to promote in its economic competition with China. It takes a lot of power to run the data centers needed for artificial intelligence, build advanced semiconductors and develop a domestic battery or drone industry. Diverting precious gigawatts to metal means raising prices for other users, which will inevitably make some desirable projects too expensive to green-light. Higher tariffs will, in the short run, mean higher prices in the coming months. But they also raise deeper questions. Does the United States want to confront deindustrialization by restarting smelters and doubling down on old, albeit amazing, industrial processes? Or does it want to focus instead on building the technologies of the future?
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Bio-Inspired Sparxell Ready to Glitter Bomb the Market
If all that glitters cannot be gold, must it be plastic? Sparxell thinks not. Now, a grant from the European Commission will help the bio-inspired startup find out. The Cambridge spin-out secured roughly a $2.15 million grant (1.9 million euros) from the European Innovation Council (EIC) as the sustainable colorant technologist works to overcome the 'critical technical barriers' with scaling production. More from Sourcing Journal Material World: Celebrate Biological Diversity Day With Carp Couture Chemical Textile Recycler Eeden Closes $20M Funding Round Material World: Still Burning Bras? You Can Bury Balena's The funding—awarded to 'disruptive innovations addressing global challenges,' per Horizon Europe—adds to Sparxell's previous investments and will help secure the startup's foothold in the $48 billion global colorant market. According to Precedence Research, the whitespace in the market sits around a 'healthy compound annual growth rate of up to 12.22 percent. The timing's right, too, as Sparxell reported 'This European Innovation Council funding is transformative for Sparxell, allowing us to accelerate our manufacturing scale-up and overcome key technical challenges much earlier in our development pathway,' Benjamin Droguet, founder and CEO of Sparxell, said. 'With our plant-based technology, we're offering industries a fundamentally different approach to color that works with nature rather than against it while meeting the highest performance standards.' Sparxell was founded in 2022 after scientists discovered a way to replicate vibrant hues found in nature using plant-based cellulose—a renewable, biodegradable resource extracted from waste streams. Sparxell's pigments use the same material that plants and animals use, the company said, to produce its fade-resistant colorants. Thus, its products are toxin-free pigments that allegedly last longer than the incumbent options on the market. Since 'spinning out' in 2023, Sparxell said it has commercially validated 25 fully-funded pilot projects. Since joining LVMH's La Maison des Startups accelerator program last September, Sparxell said it's befriended the luxury market, connecting with a handful of the house's heritage brands, like Loewe and Givenchy. Previously, the color platform technology company was acknowledged by the Biomimicry Institute's Ray of Hope Prize back in November 2023 (with $100,000) before taking home the $250,000 Sustainable Collaborative Prize from Morgan Stanley that December. Last month, Sparxell was named 'Best Sustainability Venture' by the Falling Walls Foundation. Last week in Paris, the eco tech developer took home two more awards from the ChangeNow Summit (including the Coups de Cœur jury-decreed honor) at its annual ESG showcase. This year's summit had 15 major partners (like Kering and Moët Hennessy) and 12 ecosystem partners (like B Lab and Clean Tech Open). In addition to LVMH's La Maison des Startups, Sparxell is also part of the Respond Accelerator by the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt, the automotive group's independent corporate foundation that was named for the Nazi-affiliated industrialist for reportedly rescuing the car czar from bankruptcy (and/or Daimler-Benz) back in 1959. Sparxell joined the six-month program's fifth cohort, last April. In operation with the European startup hub UnternehmerTUM, the program has, since launching in 2020, supported over 50 startups solving for net-zero. Currently, Sparxell said, the team is focused on fundraising to accelerate market adoption across various industrial verticals. Sign in to access your portfolio
