“We Received a Good Order From Turkey Recently”
Ralph von Arx, Retech Managing Director
Retech, simple production of heaters and heating elements as well as electronic parts for the textile industry in a small, leased plant in Boniswil, Switzerland in 1976. Retech is now the leading manufacturer of heated godets for almost most OEMs who do not manufacture the godets themselves or rely on quality products. Connecting the its secret of success to the ability to produce customer-specific requirements quickly, with high quality and cost-effectively, Retech company survived the difficult pandemic process without serious effects. The company, which stabilized its production and sales especially after the spring of 2020, experienced a satisfactory order intake in 2021 due to the increasing demands.
We interviewed with Retech Managing Director Ralph von Arx and talked about the measures taken by the company during the pandemic process, its plans for the post-pandemic period and developments in the sector.
What are your major products for the industry? What are the distinguishing features of your major products?
Retech is known as the “expert for drawing fibers to perfection”. Therefore our main products are heated godets to thermal treat and draw the manmade fibres. Over the years we developed the godets to perfection and are able to achieve highest quality in respect of temperature profiles, extremely long lasting motor bearings and temperature measuring in highest precision with our new temperature transmission system.
The sectors are going through a very difficult process due to the pandemic in the whole world. How was the year 2020 in terms of your company? How was your company’s reaction to Pandemic?
Fortunately the pandemic was not that serious for us from business point of view. The business became stable after the spring months 2020 and performed well towards the end of 2020. In 2021 we experienced a satisfactory order intake with increasing demand during the last months. Due to this overall situation we had been lucky to overcome the demanding times without serious impacts.
However, it was and still is a great challenge to protect employees from being affected by Covid19 and to always adapt the security concepts of our company to the current situation. It is of great importance to us to ensure that the health of our employees is guaranteed at all times as well as to ensure the functionality of the company and therefore the delivery reliability to our customers.
Which kind of innovations and progress is expected in upcoming years in the textile machinery sector and especially in the yarn tension sensor, godet rollers, temperature controllers?
We are convinced that the coming years will be demanding and we still need and have the opportunity to adapt our products to the future market needs. It will become more and more important to collect data and understand these data in a way to create a customers benefit. As example towards yarn quality (talking about yarn tension sensors) or predictive maintenance (looking onto godets and temperature transmission and control systems). Projects in this context are well on their way and we are convinced to be able to offer our customers valuable new opportunities in the years to come.
From which countries is the demand most for your products?
Due to the fact that our major business part is coming from OEM side our main market is still Europe. Looking towards our enduser business we have strong relations to high performance yarn producers in the US, Korea and China. Next to these countries we are facing a good order intake from Turkey.
In the yarn tension sensor, godet rollers, temperature controllers, what are the major challenges faced by Retech and how do you propose to overcome them?
Our major challenges are currently the lead times which are raising tremendously and giving us some problems. Next to the lead times itself it is the price increase on raw materials which not only Retech is experiencing but also the whole market and as this situation will move on in the coming months solutions have to be found. Fortunately we have built up a good stock of key parts to be able to serve our customers still with reasonable lead times.
Next to this current supply chain issues our main challenges are that our customers are asking more and more for higher temperature solutions for their specific materials for high performance fibers. We are currently already reaching more than 400 °C based on our “standard” technology. These are outstanding results but it will move on.
As Retech, what are your expectations from 2021? Are there any plans for launching new products targeted at textile industry? Do you plan to invest or expand your manufacturing facilities?
As already mentioned 2021 will be a good year and we expect that 2022 will start positive as well. Currently we are expanding the number of employees in order to be able to fulfill all demands. Furthermore we are working on the next generation of godets and temperature transmitter and control systems to be ready for the coming technical demands.
Interview: Dilek HAYIRLI
