ITEMA: We Particularly Take Into Account the Needs of Turkish Weavers
Weaving Technologies leader brand Itema grabs the spotlight with their strong R9500 rapier and A9500 airjet machines. Reaching every corner of global textile market, Turkish textile industry is especially important for the brand.
Having a strong relationship with Tturkish textile manufacturers, the brand collects a very positive feedback from the Turkish market. As a result of efficient marketing and after sales service there are thousands of working Itema machines in Turkish market nowadys.
We interviewed with Christian Straubhaar, Itema Group Sales & Marketing Director for the ‘Italy Special Section’ of our Tekstil Teknoloji magazine.
How was 2019 for your company and what are the company’s plans for the 2020?
In a year that saw the textile machinery market suffering for a number of macro and micro economic and political dynamics, we managed to maintain a stable position in all the main markets as a result of foresighted manufacturing, commercial and financial strategies implemented over the years. Even though the textile machinery market in 2019 was impacted by a significant slowdown, especially in major markets such as Turkey and China, as Itema we managed to finalize important negotiations.
2020 started with a remarkable step change. The growing demand for the Itema best-in-class weaving technology has led to plenty of orders on the order book, thus making us confident and positive towards the new year outcome.
How important is the Turkish market to your company – and how much business is carried out here?
Generally speaking, Turkey is one of the top 5 markets for weaving machines. If we consider only Itema, the Turkish market is in our top 3. Therefore, we particularly take into account the needs of Turkish weavers, by providing not only the most advanced rapier, airjet and projectile weaving machines but guaranteeing fast and efficient after-sales service through our skilled team of dedicated technicians. Itema weaving machines are successfully running in all the main textile districts of the country, from Bursa to Denizli, from Adana to Kahramanmaraş.
What trends are you currently seeing in the textile machinery industry?
Sustainability, digitalization and fabric quality – that never goes out of fashion.
These are, nowadays, the main drivers of the weaving machinery industry and, at Itema, we are going in the same direction by injecting our innovations with concrete solutions perfectly matching these criteria.
In fact, Itema is the only manufacturer in the weaving industry that introduced a real sustainable innovation, which is iSAVER®. iSAVER®, equipped on the Itema rapier R9500-2denim – unique in the industry – completely eliminates the left hand side warp and weft waste establishing a new benchmark in sustainable weaving by saving a significant amount of raw materials and water.
Moreover, weaving mills are more and more concentrated in monitoring production processes to minimize raw materials waste and maximize cost savings and workload. Machinery management softwares are increasingly requested to allow the remote control of the whole mill. Itema developed a brand-new plant management system, named iMANAGER that brings on a pc desktop, tablet and smartphone all the relevant production data of the Itema weaving machines installed in the weaving room. Last but not least, we tirelessly innovate our weft transfer systems to guarantee the well known Itema weaving technology excellent fabric quality.
How is your company working to drive quality improvements in its machinery?
Quality is fundamental in our vision, it is rooted in our origins and we continuously strive to raise the bar to constantly set new benchmarks in the market. We collect feedbacks and inputs from our Customers, our R&D, Technical and Product Care teams investigate and execute in-depth analysis of textile, industrial and electronics latest trends, our Purchasing department adopts stringent policies to get the most out of our certified suppliers and our manufacturing plants are based on the most advanced lean manufacturing and Industry 4.0 principles to ensure the highest quality standards and reduced lead time to our worldwide Customers.
Interview: Dilek HAYIRLI
