Retech Stands Out in 2025 with Strong Demand in Niche Markets and Sustainable Solutions
Interview: Tuğba Karademir
Despite global uncertainties in 2025, Retech stood out with strong demand in high-performance niche markets and sustainable solutions. Leveraging technologies that reflect the precision and reliability of Swiss engineering, the company provides its customers with customized systems for medical and aramid yarn production.
Retech CEO Ralph von Arx describes 2025 as both an intense and challenging year. While global uncertainties and geopolitical tensions have made investment decisions more cautious, strong demand persisted in the high-performance niche markets where the company is focused. Aramid and medical yarn applications benefited from high production capacity thanks to Retech’s customized systems, supported by the strength of Swiss engineering under von Arx’s leadership. In its main export markets—including Europe, the U.S., and Asia—the company continued to offer solutions distinguished by sustainability, energy efficiency, and long service life.
How was the year 2025 for Retech? Could you evaluate the year in terms of market demand, production performance, and developments in your key export markets?
The year 2025 was both interesting and intense, but also challenging. Global uncertainties and geopolitical tensions continue to put pressure on many projects and industrial sectors, and in some cases investments are put on hold. Consequently, investment decisions are currently being made more cautiously, particularly in standard applications.
At the same time, we are seeing strong demand in several specialized niche markets where Retech is active. High-performance applications such as aramid yarns keep us busy and ensure a solid level of capacity utilization. Medical applications have also become an increasingly important and promising field for Retech and our technologies. Our key markets remain Europe, the United States and Asia.
“For us, Swiss Made is not just a label”
Switzerland is known for high-precision engineering and advanced textile technologies. How does Retech reflect this Swiss engineering strength in its machinery and solutions?
These values represent Switzerland in general – and Retech in particular. One of our key strengths lies in customer-specific engineering. Our systems are designed and optimized precisely for each individual application, ensuring optimal process performance while also minimizing energy consumption.
Another important plus is the long service life of our equipment, allowing customers to benefit from their investment for many years. For us, Swiss Made is not just a label. It represents the traditional Swiss values of precision, reliability and quality that customers expect from our products. This also includes excellent and responsive customer service.
What are the latest technological innovations Retech has introduced recently? Which of your machines or systems are currently attracting the most attention from textile manufacturers?
We would like to highlight two recent developments:
First, we have introduced solutions for high-temperature applications, with godet temperatures reaching up to 350 °C. These systems are designed for the production of high-performance fibers and are equipped with a range of monitoring functions that help extend the service life of key components. These include bearing temperature monitoring, inductor temperature monitoring and vibration monitoring.
Second, we have developed solutions specifically tailored to medical technology applications, where extremely high precision is required. These systems are equipped with very slow and highly precise drives, as well as additional sensors to ensure a highly accurate temperature profile across the complete roll surface.
Sustainability has become one of the most critical topics for the textile industry. How does Retech contribute to more sustainable production in terms of energy efficiency, resource savings, and environmentally friendly processes?
Many of the aspects mentioned above also contribute directly to the sustainability of our products. In our view, systems that are optimized for the customer’s process play a key role in ensuring the most efficient use of energy. In addition, integrated monitoring functions help significantly extend the service life of our equipment. Wherever possible, we rely on carefully selected and sustainable materials, which we continuously refine and improve.
What kinds of digital solutions or intelligent technologies does Retech offer to help manufacturers improve productivity and process control?
We integrate sophisticated IoT systems into our products, particularly in our high-end godets. This includes active monitoring of bearing temperatures, monitoring of the induction heater and vibration monitoring. These functions are key elements in ensuring operational reliability, high efficiency and maximum system availability, enabling stable 24/7 production.
How do you evaluate the Turkish market and what kind of cooperation opportunities do you see with Turkish textile manufacturers?
Türkiye is an important market for us. At present, we mainly serve it indirectly through our machinery manufacturers. Direct projects for Retech are still relatively limited. But we see opportunities where Turkish yarn producers are more focused on niche markets and specialized applications in which area we can be of support with our tailor-made solutions.
Looking ahead to the coming years, what are Retech’s strategic priorities?
Looking ahead, we intend to further strengthen our position as a leading manufacturer of godets and to continue investing in technologies that enable even more energy-efficient fiber and yarn production. At the same time, we aim to further expand our role as a solution provider for heating and drawing synthetic yarns, particularly in specialized niche markets, and to continue building our expertise in this field. With many innovative materials and new applications emerging, we see strong opportunities to support research and development with our technologies and solutions, helping our customers unlock the full potential of these new fibers and applications.
