When a single wipe can clean, scrub, and biodegrade — without a shred of plastic in sight — it's worth asking how. Ahead of his session at GO Wipes Europe 2026, we sat down with Ibrahim Sagerer-Foric, Senior Manager, LENZING™ Nonwovens Technology at Lenzing AG, to talk about the innovation behind LENZING™ DUALWIPE, and what it signals for the future of the wipes industry.

Two Jobs, One Material

Most wipes are built around a single function: they're either soft and absorbent, or tough and abrasive. DUALWIPE does both at once — and does it without relying on plastic to get there.

As Sagerer-Foric explains, DUALWIPE combines two different cleaning functions in one 100% wood-based, plastic-free material. It delivers gentle wiping and effective scrubbing side by side, while cutting environmental impact through renewable raw materials and an innovative manufacturing process.

What makes this genuinely novel isn't a coating or a chemical additive — it's engineering at the fiber level. The material is made from regenerated cellulose and built with a dual-surface design within a single sheet: one side is mechanically active and abrasive, built to lift dirt, grease, and residue; the other is soft and highly absorbent, designed for the final wipe-down. Both functions come purely from filament geometry, surface structuring, and web architecture — no fossil-based synthetics, binders, coatings, or chemical additives involved.

The result is a wipe that performs like a conventional plastic-reinforced product, but is fully biodegradable and compatible with existing wipe-converting infrastructure — meaning manufacturers can adopt it without overhauling their production lines.

Why Now?

The timing isn't incidental. The wipes and cleaning materials sector is under mounting pressure to phase out plastics, microplastics, and fossil-based inputs — while regulators tighten requirements and customers expect no drop-off in performance.

That's the tension DUALWIPE is designed to resolve. Sagerer-Foric puts it simply: the industry is under increasing pressure to replace fossil-based materials without compromising performance, and DUALWIPE demonstrates that sustainability and high performance can go hand in hand.

What's Actually Driving Customer Demand

It's not sustainability in isolation. According to Sagerer-Foric, customers are looking for solutions that are sustainable and improve product performance and process efficiency at the same time. That dual demand has directly shaped Lenzing's R&D priorities — pushing the team to develop materials with distinctive functionality while keeping convertibility and scalability front and center, so the innovation can actually move into commercial production rather than staying in the lab.

The Road Ahead: Balancing Three Pressures at Once

Looking further out, Sagerer-Foric sees one challenge dominating the next two to five years: balancing sustainability, performance, and cost simultaneously. Replacing plastics at industrial scale while staying commercially competitive won't happen in isolation — it will take close collaboration across the entire value chain, from fiber producers to converters to brand owners.

Meeting the Industry at GO Wipes Europe 2026

For Sagerer-Foric, the value of GO Wipes isn't just the stage time — it's the room. He's most looking forward to meeting customers, partners, and industry experts, exchanging ideas, and discussing how innovation can accelerate the transition to more sustainable wipes.