"Absolutely no bearing"? Not so. The basic economics of a process will not change. From the first quartewr of commercial production it has been obvious that PTO is not commercially viable. All of the tinkerfarting in the world (HTF, Ram feed, etc.) Will not change that.
Perhaps now Heddle is getting the real scoop from his engineering buds. That could have been asscertained at the outset. That is what Engineering firms do.