“We are Very Pleased with the Interest Shown in Montex®Coat at ITMA”
Interview: Dilek Hayırlı
Nicole Croonenbroek, Marketing Manager at Monforts said; “We already have a considerable number of customers operating our machines in Turkey, especially Montex stenters and Thermex dyeing ranges, but also Monfortex shrinking ranges. A Montex©Coat unit is also now running in Turkey.”
Monforts, one of the leading manufacturers of textile finishing machines, exhibited the Montex®Coat coating unit, the latest member of its product range, at ITMA 2023. Montex®Coat, which attracted great interest from the visitors during the exhibition, was sold to Thai Tuan, a Vietnamese company. During the ITMA 2023, we visited the Monforts booth and had an interview with Marketing Manager Nicole Croonenbroek.
You displayed a Montex®Coat coating unit at the ITMA 2023 exhibition. First of all, how was the interest shown in your machines during the fair? What kind of feedback did you get from your visitors?
Visitor footfall at ITMA 2023 was well beyond the company’s expectations and we were very pleased with the interest in the Montex®Coat, as the latest addition to our range of technologies. We were also able to provide visitors with detailed information about our portfolio of machines and technologies digitally, and fielded an unprecedented number of serious enquiries, many of which promise to turn into new business.
Monforts Montex stenters – for processes such as drying, stretching, heat-setting and coating – are already the industry standard for the fabric finishing industry, particularly in the sectors of denim and home textiles as well as technical textiles, providing a number of advantages in terms of production throughput and especially in energy efficiency and ressource savings. The other key technologies in our range include relaxation dryers, Thermex dyeing ranges and Monfortex compressive shrinking ranges.
Montex®Coat Saves Energy and Raw Materials
What will be the biggest advantages and benefit of this new unit to the users and the industry?
The Montex®Coat can serve a very diverse number of markets and enables full PVC coatings, pigment dyeing or minimal application surface and low penetration treatments, as well as solvent coatings. Knife coating, roller coating or screen printing can also all be accommodated with this system.
As such, the Montex®Coat provides the ultimate in flexibility and the ability to switch quickly from one fabric run to the next, without compromising on the economical use of energy or raw materials. Many refinements have been made to the Montex®Coat in the past few years, resulting in higher coating accuracy and the resulting quality of the treated fabrics. A number of advanced new improvements were introduced in Milan, including automatic edge limiters for immediately adapting to new coating widths and a new and simplified hand-held control device. These save considerable time in setting up the machine and ensuring consistent production. The Montex®Coat unit we displayed in Milan was sold to a company from Vietnam during the show.
Why is digitalisation imperative to the future of a sustainable industry? What does the company implement in terms of digitalised solutions?
Digitalisation and sustainability really go hand in hand for all textile technology companies nowadays. It is through digitalisation that further resource and machine efficiencies are being realised through complete control, not only of individual machines, but of synchronised and integrated lines and full manufacturing plants. On all of the very latest Monforts machines, advanced technologies make it possible to access comprehensive technical machine data from any location using the company’s apps.
Easy to use human-machine interfaces (HMIs) make the operation of our lines much simpler these days, cutting down training periods and at the same time reducing the chance of human error, thus leading in production with higest quality.
“We Introduced Our Green Hydrogen Concept for Textile Finishing”
What measures is the company taking towards ensuring a more sustainable future?
All of our developments are focused on resource efficiency enabling further savings to be made for customers in the consumption of energy, water and raw materials. In Milan, we also introduced the concept of using green hydrogen as a new energy source for the textile finishing, drying and related processes. This was the subject of two very well-attended seminars held at our stand during the show.
Monforts is currently leading a consortium of industrial partners and universities in the three-year WasserSTOFF project, launched in November 2022 to explore all aspects of fast-rising new industrial energy option. The target of the government-funded project is to establish to what extent hydrogen can be used in the future as an alternative heating source for textile finishing processes. This will first involve tests on laboratory equipment together with associated partners and the results will then be transferred to a stenter frame at the Monforts Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Germany.
Everybody knows that textile finishing is a high energy consuming process and to make the processes more efficient, we already offer several solutions, but as a technology leader we are also rising to the challenge of exploring alternative heating options to be ready for the future. Green hydrogen’s potential as a clean fuel source is tremendous, but there is much we need to explore when considering its use in the textile finishing processes carried out globally on our stenter dryers and other machines.
What industrial and economic challanges are currently impacting your company, and how are you responding to them?
The cost of energy remains a major concern for textile manufacturers and for our new stenters the MonforClean heat recovery system with air/air or/and air/water is fully integrated into the stenter chamber. In combination with other new features results in energy savings of up to 43%. As a modular system it can also be extended for exhaust air cleaning and oil and smoke reduction.
We also offer a number of options for retrofitting to exisiting lines here. The Monforts universal Energy Tower, for example, is a flexible, free-standing air/air heat exchanger for recovering the heat from the exhaust air flow of thermal processes. It can result in a 25% reduction in the energy consumed by a line, depending on the exhaust air volume and operating temperature.
A Monforts Eco Booster, integrated into the chamber design of the Montex stenter, is another retrofitting option. As a single heat recovery system with automatic cleaning, it can be added to existing ranges and up to 35% energy costs can be saved. In addition, the Eco Booster consumes only minimal amounts of water during the cleaning cycle and the entire process is controlled and monitored automatically.
How does a trade fair like ITMA help to support your business? Did ITMA 2023 meet your expectations? As you know, exhibitors and visitors in many countries, including Turkey, could not come to the ITMA due to visa problems. Has this issue affected your business at ITMA?
We did all we could to help our customers get visas in time for the show, and we were very sorry some of them could not attend ITMA 2023 through a situation beyond the control of everyone. Neverthless, ITMA 2023 was above our own expectations and visitor numbers were up on the last show in 2019 in Barcelona, which I think was surprise to a lot of people.
“A Montex©Coat unit is also now running in Turkey”
Which are Monforts’ most demanded products in the Turkish market? Did the interest of Turkish visitors make you happy?
Despite the visa problems already mentioned, the interest from Turkish customers old and new was higher than we expected. We already have a considerable number of customers operating our machines in Turkey, especially Montex stenters and Thermex dyeing ranges, but also Monfortex shrinking ranges. A Montex©Coat unit is also now running in Turkey.
How has the year 2023 been so far for your company? Can you evaluate it in terms of your orders and export markets?
Prior to ITMA 2023, we viewed this year as challenging, not just for Monforts as a machine supplier, but for the entire textile industry. So what was perhaps most surprising at the show – given the generally gloomy analyst forecasts for the immediate future of the textile industry – was the number of new sales being announced and the upbeat atmosphere.
Meanwhile, we are preparing for the future and always working on improvements and innovations together with our customers to meet their demands and help transform the world of textiles with value-added – Monforized! – products.
