From the Sector

ITM, to be held in Istanbul at the beginning of June, will once again see a strong participation of VDMA member companies. Almost 90 exhibitors from Germany will exhibit at the trade fair, most of whom are members of the VDMA. In addition to the VDMA member companies exhibiting with their own booth, numerous VDMA members will be represented in Istanbul via agents. They cover nearly all different machinery chapters with a focus on spinning, nonwovens, weaving, knitting, warp knitting and finishing.

In Istanbul, the VDMA members will show their latest innovations. In technological terms, significant trends are digitalisation and automation. These themes have been present for some time but will continue to play a central role in meeting the challenges for many years to come. Another trend that has also been around for a while is sustainability. Today it is much more than a buzzword: Efficiency in energy, raw materials or water as well as recycling are not feel-good issues but have a real economic and social background.

For the textile machinery manufacturers organised in the VDMA, Turkey is a major trading partner. In 2023, textile machinery and accessories worth approximately 350 million euros were exported from Germany to Turkey, which made Turkey the second biggest sales market for German companies. After three years in which China was the most important supplier of textile machinery to Turkey, Germany has now regained this top position.

Turkey is at the doorstep of Europe, which gives Turkish textile producers a powerful geographic advantage over Asian sourcing destinations. The textile companies in the region have a deep experience and know-how in making the highest quality textile and apparel for leading markets of Europe and employs a young, dynamic, and well-educated workforce.

But ITM is not just a place for visitors from Turkey, as Dr. Harald Weber, Managing Director of the VDMA Textile Machinery Association explains: “It should not be forgotten that ITM not only attracts visitors from Turkey, but also from the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa. Turkey's proximity to the European Union and its fully integrated textile value chain also make it interesting in terms of the EU's strategy for sustainable and circular textiles and the increasing importance of recycling in the future.”

In early December, the chairman of the Walter Reiners Foundation of the VDMA Textile Machinery Association, Peter D. Dornier presented awards to six successful young engineers. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the award ceremony took place as a web conference for the first time.

Philippa Böhnke, ITM Dresden, and Juan Carlos Arañó Romero, ITA Aachen, were honoured with creativity awards for the cleverest bachelor or project work. The prizes are endowed with 3,000 euros each. Ms. Böhnke’s project dealt with composite implants for the repair and regeneration of bone defects. In his bachelor thesis, Mr. Arañó Romero has developed a spinning machine able to produce yarn with material from the moon. By this, the transport effort in space travel can be minimised, because insulating material for example necessary for a moon base can be produced on the moon directly.

Harry Lucas, TU Chemnitz, and Maximilian Speiser, Reutlingen University, were awarded two promotion prizes in the category master thesis with prize money of 3,500 euros each. The master thesis of Mr. Lucas deals with the development of a new knitting head for jacquard knitted fabrics, enabling a large variety of colours e.g. in the production of fan scarfs. Mr. Speiser showed in his master thesis a solution for increasing energy efficiency in the nonwovens process.

This year, two promotion prizes of the German Textile Machinery Industry in the dissertation category were awarded to Dr. Frederik Cloppenburg, ITA Aachen, and Dr. Annett Schmieder, TU Chemnitz. In his dissertation Mr. Cloppenburg developed a model for the optimisation of roller cards in the nonwovens process. Ms. Schmieder introduced in her dissertation a damage analysis system for fibre ropes. The system detects when a rope must be replaced e.g. in transport applications.

The award ceremony 2021 shall take place with physical presence again. It is scheduled for early May at the fair Techtextil in Frankfurt.