Turkey is a Great Investment Centre for Us

Tonello General Manager Francesco Picco said; “The Turkish market serves as the gateway to the east. In other words, it is a strong and important alternative between us and the Asian market. At ITM 2024, we received great interest not only from European but also from many Asian customers.”

Tonello, the world leader in sustainable denim washing solutions, made a strong return to the Turkish market with ITM 2024 thanks to its partnership with Babylon International, which undertook its representation. We interviewed with Francesco Picco, General Manager of Tonello, for our Tekstil Teknoloji magazine. Picco made important evaluations about both the products they exhibited and ITM 2024 Exhibition.

Laundry (R)Evolution: innovation continues

At ITM, Tonello presented the latest advancement of its Laundry (R)Evolution. The laundry revolution consists of three essential steps:

• THE Laser: an innovative, intelligent, and versatile laser range designed by designers for designers, offering comprehensive solutions for denim finishing.
• All-in-One System: the flagship Tonello washing machine that integrates 4 sustainable technologies, streamlining the finishing process while minimizing waste and optimizing resource use. This includes technologies like:
  – EGO, which uses ozone in both water and air for a brighter garment, less water and chemical consumption;

– NoStone® for authentic, sustainable, stone-wash effects without pumice stone;

– UP, which optimizes garment washing, bringing the liquor ratio to unprecedented levels (LR 1:2) while reducing consumption, time, and costs;

– Core 2.0, a nebulizing system that creates effects and applies products to the garment, improving performance and decreasing water consumption by up to 96%.

• Metro: the innovative software that monitors and optimizes water, energy and CO2 consumption in real time of the entire laundry.

Technologies Revolutionising Washing from Tonello

• DyeMate: the patented technology that revolutionizes and reinterprets the traditional indigo garment dyeing process, taking it to a new evolutionary stage and making it automatic and repeatable, efficient and sustainable. And with the possibility of also making sulfur and VAT dyes with the same technology.
• Ripper Mode: an innovative mode that improves the precision and efficiency of laser treatments. For perfect breakages that respect the integrity of the fabric weft.
• Advanced B.O.P. System: with sophisticated Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence systems, B.O.P. is even better performing; it can detect even completely white garments, or any other color, reducing errors and increasing productivity.

Metro and Guardian: special software

A special focus will be on two solutions for managing and monitoring industrial laundries:

• Metro: an essential component of Laundry (R)Evolution, is the digital platform that measures actual laundry consumption and enables centralized management and automatic analysis of all Tonello machines. To control, optimize, increase sustainability and efficiency of processes.
• Guardian: is the advanced diagnostic system that monitors every component of the machines, ensuring maximum efficiency and durability. Guardian is compatible with PCs, tablets, smartphones and touchscreens of Tonello machines, and allows offline data logging with network synchronization. It offers real-time alerts via email, facilitating maintenance management.

This year’s slogan of ITM 2024 Exhibition is ‘Discover the Future’. What are your predictions for the future of the textile industry? How are you preparing for the future as a company in terms of digitalisation, sustainability and automation?

As a company, our motto has always been ‘ensuring sustainability’. Since 20 years, we have been working with this motto and we endeavour to maintain it.  Our machines are highly efficient with very little water consumption and liquid ratio, with lower consumption in terms of all kinds of energy. This is a point of view that we have adopted in the past and will continue to do so in the future.

The textile machinery sector has been going through a turbulent period especially in recent years. What do you think ITM 2024 means for the sector? Did the exhibition fulfil your expectations?

Tonello decided to return to Turkey after a long break. We were missing this fair for 20 years, I can say that we also missed the local market. Now we are back because we think 2024 is an important year for the whole textile industry. 2023 was very quiet, but 2024 started in a different way and the Turkish market is very important for us. That is why we decided to come back again. Asian markets are very important for every manufacturer, including Tonello. The Turkish market serves as the gateway to the east. In other words, it is a strong and important alternative between us and the Asian market. Therefore, we really believe in the efficiency of this market. We met very important customers with good projects that they have got. Participants who could not go to the fair organised in Europe last year took the opportunity to come to ITM this year. We also met with companies from many countries of the world. This year, we have received great interest not only from European but also from many Asian customers. For all these reasons, Turkey is a great investment centre for us.