“We Continued to Look For Innovative Solutions for Our Customers During the Pandemic Process”
Superba, world leader in heat-setting and space-dyeing for carpet yarn, and member of the Vandewiele family of companies, is established in Turkey since 1992.
The company, which has recently introduced new and surprising developments in the fields of heat setting, texturing and winding, continued to provide technical support to its customers during the pandemic period, and to deliver machinery and spare parts.
We interviewed with Superba Vandewiele Group Sales Director Raphaël Boulmeau for the “France Special Issue” of our Tekstil Teknoloji magazine. Boulmeau explained the measures Superba took to combat the pandemic, the changes in the carpet yarn industry and the 2021 targets.
Firstly, the whole world has been going through a very troubled period for more than 1 year due to the coronavirus pandemic. How was 2020 for Superba? What kind of a road map did you determine as a company in order to minimize the effects of the pandemic?
Our priority during this pandemic period is to meet the needs of our customers while preserving the health of our staff. Like the other companies of Vandewiele, Superba continued to provide technical assistance to our customers, as well as setting up procedures to deliver machines and spare parts. Of course, all this done in strict compliance with the health regulations enforced by the French government. We are continually looking for solutions to meet the demands of our customers.
“In addition to sustainability, digital solutions gained importance in the pandemic process”
In the post-pandemic period, there will be some changes in the products, production models, and supply points required in the textile industry. What kind of changes do you think happened for the heat-setting and carpet yarn sector?
The textile industry is constantly reinventing itself to meet the needs of different applications. Especially, today, to overcome the Covid-19 an unprecedented health situation, the focus turns to digital solutions as well as sustainability.
Vandewiele in general, and Superba in particular, offers innovative solutions to reduce waste between the yarn heat-set process and tufting. As a member of the Vandewiele group, Superba participates to the development of transversal solutions enabling our customers to fully manage all the steps in the carpet sector manufacturing.
We obviously think about heat-set, but also tufting and weaving. As such, our new B403 winder offers a unique control of yarn quality to deliver first choice bobbins. This leads to the reduction of waste. The target is to optimize the following stages of the carpet manufacturing process. All this was made possible by the integration into this revolutionary equipment, state-of-the-art technologies from the Vandewiele group.
What popular requests do you receive from customers these days regarding their machinery?
Our customers also need better interconnections between the various processes. We provide them with solutions through Vandewiele’s TEXconnect technology. In fact, TEXconnect extracts digital information from different machines and uploads data to the cloud. These connectivity solutions between the different carpet manufacturing machines allow our customers to have high-added value reporting for a process optimization.
TEXconnect solution provides our customers with relevant information and thus facilitates decision-making.
“We will prefer to meet face to face with our customers “
Could you tell us about your worldwide sales and support network and the countries you export? What are your expansion plans?
Here too, we all realize that the change brought by Covid-19 modifies the customer / supplier relationships. This most likely will not turn back. Although we will always favor to meet a customer in person to discuss new investment. At the same time, we are strengthening Superba’s presence in digital solutions in the field of service, spare parts, and technical support. Vandewiele’s subsidiaries and partners are monitoring services and distributing spare parts to our main sales areas.
The effects of the pandemic seem to continue in the first months of 2021. As Superba, what are your expectations and goals in 2021? Do you have new product development studies?
Indeed, the pandemic is not over, and it will have a long-term human and financial impact. However, many players in the carpet industry foresee a way out of the crisis by anticipating their investments. Superba, as a leader in advanced heat-setting solutions, benefits from this dynamism of new projects. This is why our MCD3 space-dyeing machine, our TVP3 heat-set line and our B403 winder are highly successful. Moreover, Superba is present to provide its customers with innovative solutions for the processing of polyester, polypropylene, polyamide, and acrylic yarns.
We are all going through a complicated period, and in response to this, Superba is enhances its relationships with customers to meet their requirements.
The industry of tomorrow will require innovative solutions that will improve the performance of our customers by using data to optimize production, while being more eco-responsible. We believe that to prepare the future, digitalization must be placed at the service of sustainability.
Interview: Dilek Hayırlı
