Gualchieri Increases Sales Volume by 40 Percent Despite the Pandemic
Marta Zannoni, Sales Director of Gualchieri E Gualchieri
Gualchieri E Gualchieri company, based in Italy, Proto, which is a leading machine manufacturer for the production of fancy, special, chenille and technical yarns, reacted quickly during the pandemic process and entered a rapid recovery period. The company, which continues its production without interruption, has increased its sales volume by approximately 40% in the last 2 years under the influence of the pandemic. Aiming to increase its production capacity in order to respond to the increasing demand for its machines, the company is primarily considering a capacity increase for its best-selling Air Jet Spikefilo-Air.
We interviewed with Marta Zannoni, Sales Director of Gualchieri E Gualchieri for the special file ‘Yarn Technologies’ in our Tekstil Teknoloji magazine. We talked with Zannoni about the measures taken by the company during the pandemic, the latest products they developed and their plans.
Can you talk about the product portfolio of Gualchieri and the products it has recently developed?
Gualchieri E Gualchieri, based in Prato, Italy, is a leading manufacturer of machinery for the production of fancy yarns, special yarns, chenille yarns and technical yarns, that are well known and appreciated all over the world since 1973. We aim to increase our production capacity in order to respond to this demand for our machines, which are in demand day by day in our company. For instance, we are considering a priority capacity increase for our best selling machine, the Air Jet Spikefilo-Air. In addition, we provide remote assistance to increase customers’ productivity and solve problems faster.
We have created a mobile application “Yarn G Lab” to help all yarn technicians working on any fancy spinning machine manage the yarn production process and control our machines in real time from any device and from any location using their own machines. In this way, our customers’ technicians can easily manage all processes related to the machine. This application can be downloaded for free.
What percent of your machines do you export annually? Which are the top markets geographically?
We sell approximately 50% of our production in the domestic market and the other half abroad, especially in India. Especially in 2020/2021, our main markets were Italy (50%), India (25%), Europe (5%) and Extra EU countries (20%). In this sense, we can say that we export 50% of our machines.
In this process, Turkey showed that it is one of the most important suppliers especially for Europe. How do you evaluate the importance of Turkey for the textile industry? Do you have any new product for Turkish market? How important is the Turkish market to Gualchieri– and much work do you carry out in this region?
Turkey has made significant progress in production in the last 2 years, especially with the pandemic, and increased the number of machines and increased volume in production. During the pandemic period, especially the difficult process that Asia went through at the first stage had an effect on this volume increase, but the Turkish textile industry has shown to the whole world that it can easily meet this potential. Of course, we follow these developments closely and we know very well that Turkey is one of the world’s leading producer countries in the field of textile production. We know that very special works are done in Turkey and thanks to our partner Teksel Tekstil A.Ş, we have the chance to follow the Turkish market very closely. In Turkey, we are moving forward with our machines Fantafilo and Fantaroc/Fantaextra, which are mainly in the field of home textile, clothing and technical performance yarns.
How was your company’s reaction to Pandemic? How was the year 2021 in terms of your company? Are there any plans for launching new products targeted at yarn machinery industry?
As you know, the pandemic process was very difficult in Italy at the beginning and production was interrupted in almost all sectors. As Gualchieri, of course, we were also affected by this pandemic, but we reacted very quickly and experienced a rapid recovery process and started our production immediately. Despite the many difficulties experienced, our sales volume has increased by approximately 40% in the last 2 years under the influence of the pandemic. More and more companies are looking for quality machines to produce high quality yarns with the best fibres. In order to respond to this, we aim to increase our production even more.
Interview: Dilek HAYIRLI
