“Thanks to Our Product Diversity, Our Success Continues Even in Difficult Times”
Verena Ruckh, Head of Advertising and Marketing at Brückner
Brückner has been operating in many areas of the textile industry for many years, such as finishing and coating of textiles, technical textiles, carpets, and nonwovens. We interviewed with Verena Ruckh, Head of Advertising and Marketing at Brückner for ‘German Textile Machinery Industry Special Issue’ in our Tekstil Teknoloji magazine. Verena Ruckh made evaluations about the textile industry by referring to the worldwide development. Headlines for the topic of the interview are as follows:
“We are very happy that we were able to achieve our sales target in 2022”
The year 2022 was still very challenging for us in many respects. First of all, the procurement of parts in particular was still present. Some suppliers were only able to deliver very late or in some cases not at all. Added to this we had to fight with the extreme price increases for raw materials. The order income in 2022 was not too bad and we are happy that – despite of all the challenges – we were able to achieve our sales target. As we are active in many fields of the textile industry, such as finishing and coating of textiles, technical textiles, carpets and nonwovens, our customers are located all over the globe. And this variety in our product range helps us to stay successful even in somewhat weaker times.
Of course, we also have to deal with the issue of staff shortages. However, the education and support of young people has been very important to us in the company for many years and decades. We train young talents in various fields every year and most of them stay with us after their training. This means that we are not quite as affected by the current staff shortage as other companies.
“We apply the solutions we have developed in times of crisis”
The energy crisis probably affects us all. However, our customers are significantly more affected than we are, because heating a textile dryer involves high energy consumption. For years, we have been researching and developing solutions to make our dryers more energy-efficient. Many of our solutions can already be implemented today. For example, heat recovery systems can significantly save energy by using the exhaust air from the production process to heat up fresh air or water. Another example is the use of minimum application units instead of full bath impregnation. Here, only as much liquor is applied to the fabric as necessary, and a lot of energy can thus be saved in the subsequent drying process. At the same time, chemicals and residual liquor can be saved.
“We have equipped almost all of our machines with intelligent control systems”
For many years, we have been developing environmentally friendly and sustainable solutions, because this is the only way we can remain competitive in the future and, above all, also offer our customers a positive outlook. Our modern machines are equipped with intelligent control systems and are thus significantly reducing the consumption of energy and chemicals. As I already mentioned, we offer e.g. heat-recovery systems and minimum application units, just to name a few. The use of these machines leads to a massive reduction in environmental footprint compared to other and older machine models. Other developments we are currently working on, are in the direction of CO2-neutral textile finishing as well as automation and digitalization. In this context we will present some innovations at ITMA 2023 in Milan.
“Our thoughts are with all the people who lost their lives in the earthquake”
Well, there is still a lot of uncertainty on the markets. Many of our customers hold back their investments and the overall general mood is one of wait-and-see. Add to this the still ongoing war in Europe and the terrible earthquake in Türkiye. Our thoughts are with all those people who lost their lives, families, friends and homes in these terrible war and earthquake. It is not easy to find the right words in such a situation, but we still have to try to look forward. And we hope for an improvement in the global economic situation in the second half of this year, therefore we are really looking forward to ITMA in June, that could hopefully bring a turnaround, even if only for the textile industry.
Interview: Özge Çağıl Sütcü
