EFI Reggiani: Listening to the Customer Has Always Been Our Best Approach and We will Continue This
In 2019, the biggest innovation of EFI Reggiani, one of the leading companies in the textile printing industry, was to launch the revolutionary single-pass printing machine BOLT.
We interwieved with EFI Reggiani’s Vice President and General Manager Adele Genoni. Genoni said; “Turkey has always been one of our key markets. We currently collaborate with two local agencies since the 1970s, serving more than 130 customers, of which 40 owns more than 3 units since 1964.”
Over the last year, what have been your key textile-related activities?
We are currently focused on developing the best solutions for the market. We believe that our biggest impact has been the single-pass technology that we have brought to the textile industry We showcased the EFI Reggiani BOLT to the world during the ITMA exhibition in Barcelona. Thanks to its cutting-edge printhead concept and high-performance ink delivery system, the BOLT reaches a record throughput speed of 90 meters/minute at a 600 x 600 dots per inch (dpi) resolution. It features high-end imaging thanks to drop sizes from 5 to 30 picoliters and provides premium-quality 600 x 4,800 maximum dpi resolution printing, allowing customers to address their full range of design needs. The printer also has another remarkable advantage in its ability to include one or more analog printing stations as an option, integrated into the digital printer for special effects.
The EFI Reggiani BOLT represents the epitomy of technological transformation for the textile’s industry digitalization.
What developments have your recently made in the European and Turkey market?
With high-performance solutions for small businesses and complex industrial plants alike, EFI Reggiani products can satisfy any request. EFI Reggiani delivers an overall solution for the whole textile process, starting from yarn treatment to fabric printing and finishing. With the high quality and performance of our machines and outstanding service to our customers, today EFI Reggiani represents a one-stop-shop for textile customers as the premiere manufacturer of analog and digital printers and pre-post treatment machines, such as denim dyeing lines, washing systems, bleaching, etc.
What technological trends are you currently seeing in the digital printing machinery market?
The main trends we are currently observing in the digital printing machinery market are rerlated to three main axis:
1) sustainability, that means greener production processes, requesting less water, less energy and less chemicals consumption as well as sustainable and recycled fabrics and fibers;
2) big data management and artificial intelligence, meaning that world pushes technology development toward preventive maintenance and machine learning; and
3) the progress of technical textiles for any application, being fashion, sportswear, home, healthcare, etc.
What are your customers increasingly requesting in terms of digital printing machinery?
The market is always more demanding. The market is rewarding textile producers that not only deliver high performance and quality, but also reliability, overall uptime and a lower environmental impact.
At EFI Reggiani, we have such a solutions , such as the EFI Reggiani TERRA pigment and EFI Reggiani IRIS direct-to-fabric sublimation. All of these innovations are going in the direction of improving productivity and sustainability.
How important is the Turkish market to your company – and much work do you carry out in this country?
Turkey has always been one of our key markets. We currently collaborate with two local agencies since the 1970s, serving more than 130 customers, of which 40 owns more than 3 units since 1964.
Turkey is actually EFI Reggiani’s core market – proven by constant investments from our customers and from our side as well. For example, with the BDR acquisition last May. BDR Boya Kimya is a leading manufacturer of reactive inkjet inks for industrial digital textile printing. We believe the acquisition of BDR will be phenomenal for our future steps in textiles, enhancing our capability with ink and chemistry, and fitting well into the entire EFI textile ecosystem. We are really excited about it. Turkey is no doubt a growing market and now that we have a stronger presence there, we will improve on the communication to our customers due to our proximity with them, especially for in the after-sales and spare parts service.
How is your company approaching the demand for ındustry 4.0 solutions?
Industry 4.0 has since the beginning been a priority for EFI Reggiani. That’s why our printers are provided with an innovative and adaptive multi-language and multi-culture graphic user interface, as well as remote control systems to facilitate support by EFI Reggiani engineers when the printer is already at the customer’s site. We also offer the possibility to interconnect our machines with factory IT and logistics systems to streamline our customers’ production processes.
In this perspective, in 2017 we also launched EFI Go! App that allows printer operators to monitor the status of multiple and heterogeneous EFI inkjet printers and jobs using their smartphone or tablet. The app creates more flexibility and allows the user to multi-task creating a more efficient workplace and achieve higher productivity.
What are your plans for the next couple of years?
EFI Reggiani spends a lot of effort in R&D – it is one of our business pillars in the company. Listening to the customer has always been our best approach and we will continue to do so. Like that, we are developing solutions to better support their businesses. The continuous development of productive systems and processes with lower environmental impact in each segment of the supply chain for full textile workflow is definitely one of our big goals.
Interview: Dilek HAYIRLI
