Climatex^® Lifecycle™Natural Stretch: a technical product development for nature.
To date, Climatex^® Lifecycle™ upholstery fabrics, which are compostable and environmentally sound, have obtained 16 design awards worldwide in recognition of their innovations in delivering ecological compatibility with superior functional and aesthetic performance.

Technical requirements for manufacturing of industrial products, such as office seating furniture, continue to increase year after year. The amount of stretch or elasticity of upholstery fabrics is becoming more and more important because of the convex and concave curved shapes of furniture design. Until now, fabrics could meet the requirements of these features could only through the integration of synthetic elastomere yarns, such as Lycra^®. Lycra^® happens to be incompatible with composting.

Rohner Textil AG' s design team, headed by Lothar Pfister, has searched for over 8 years to figure out how to make textiles elastic without using synthetic materials. The design team successfully achieved its goal with the successful development of Climatex^® Lifecycle™Natural Stretch.

The team needed to connect three separate factors for the design:

Wool, with its property of having large elasticity was connected with Ramie, a compound natural fibre. The third factor was the manufacturing technique: using special weaving constructions and novel finishing methods without the use of chemicals. The combination resulted in a new generation of fabrics, Climatex^® Lifecycle™Natural Stretch. This new line perserves the ecological integrity already established by earlier generations of Climatex^® Lifecycle™ upholstery.

Through this product innovation Rohner Textil AG has once again demonstrated its commitment to "Product Redesign for nature." The philosophy has been translated successfully into a product innovation for a second time.

In June of 1999 the first products were introduced by DesignTex at the Neocon furniture convention in Chicago, USA.