Industry 4.0 is a Reality and Metaverse is Already Developed
UCMTF is the trade association grouping the French textile machinery manufacturers. France is the sixth largest textile equipment exporter worldwide and UCMTF members are well known for their standard portfolios, as well as tailor-made equipment. It will be an honour and a pleasure to welcome customers at our members’ booths at ITMA 2023, says Christian Guinet, Secretary General of UCMTF, the French Textile Equipment Manufacturers’ Association, in an interview with Fibre2Fashion.
Has the French textile machinery industry revived to pre-pandemic levels?
After the pandemic, our sales rebounded by more than 50 per cent in 2021 to a “normal” €1 billion annual turnover. I do not have yet the precise 2022 figures, but they should be around this figure both for orders intakes and sales.
At the beginning of 2023, our order books were quite good. Most of our members cannot deliver new orders before the second half of 2023 and new orders are coming in at a reasonable pace. So, we do not have any reason to be anxious about our near future. For the long run, we believe that the apparel and home textiles productions will at least increase with the world population and the economic growth and that many new applications will fuel the technical textile sector. Recycling processes may dampen the production of new fibres, but recycling is also a new sector by itself which needs as many equipment and workforce as the more traditional sectors.
When do you see the demand picking up given the recessionary fears in many countries?
As mentioned, our order books are quite normal. It is when everything looks complicated and difficult that good news may come in. War, logistical disruptions, high energy prices and inflation, higher interest rates make up for the headlines. But logistical disruptions seem to ease substantially, transportation prices are going back to pre-crisis levels, the inflation peak seems behind us, and interest rates are increasing at a lower speed. So, it may be time to be positive!
What new technologies and innovations have the French textile industry come out with in the last two years?
Industry 4.0 is already a reality in the factories of our customers. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no more a dream but a tool to maximise the cost reductions, and the metaverse is already developed, and is being used even by us as an association to design virtual presentations.
In our R&D departments, we see the developments of digitalisation and AI. For example, to design new equipment we have incredible tools like CATIA (Computer Aided Three-Dimensional Interactive Application), which has been developed by a French software company.
It is sure that digitalisation within a factory or between customers and suppliers will continue to take a bigger and bigger role.
Concerning the energy savings, I believe that most of our contributions are not within our own companies but are coming from the equipment we offer. Nevertheless, within our own companies we continue to see mergers and acquisitions which are a source of economies of scale and rationalisations.
Do you see a shift in the buyer demand post-pandemic in terms of textile technology preferences and order quantities?
Our customers have to adapt more and more quickly to their own markets’ demands. They have to offer new products with zero defects and less environmental footprints. Then they need flexible equipment and many services from us. Our members have to be agile to design, produce and service the equipment which are needed even for small orders. As they are mostly SMEs, run by real entrepreneurs, they can sustain this strategy.
How did the recent energy crisis affect the French textile machinery industry?
From a short-term point of view, the energy crisis, and to be precise, the price increases of energy we have to support, have a negative effect on our margins. For the long term, I think it will have a positive effect. One of our members, just a few days ago, showed me the energy savings from the replacement of an equipment he had computed for a customer. The pay back of the equipment he was offering was less than a year compared to the machine which was installed in the customer’s factory.
The equipment we sell may run for many years but the old equipment are not energy efficient. New investments have very quick paybacks. So, this is a real argument to invest for manufacturers, and an additional chance for us to sell new equipment.
What breakthrough technologies for the textile industry will UCMTF member companies showcase at ITMA 2023?
ITMA will take place in June 2023 in Milan. I cannot speak specifically of the new features our members will introduce. Each equipment manufacturer has his own strategy to present them to his own partners and to the general market.
What are your expectations from ITMA 2023?
ITMA 2023 will be a great edition. As per statistics received from the ITMA organisers in February, by then already 120,000 square metres were booked, which is about 10 per cent more than the final figures for ITMA 2019 in Barcelona (before the pandemic). This increase does not come from the number of exhibitors, but from bigger stands reserved by many exhibitors. We can suppose this means that they are thinking positively and have many equipment to show, many improvements of course, but also quite a number of breakthrough technologies. This is quite a thriller, let’s wait and see!
We expect ITMA 2023 to help finalise orders already in the pipeline and to open new perspectives with new customers.
What is the current strength of members at UCMTF?
We are particularly strong in long fibre spinning (wool, acrylic …), yarn twisting and control (including technical yarns), space-dyeing, heat setting for carpet yarns, carpet systems, bleaching and hydro-extractor equipment, dyeing and finishing, felts and belts for finishing processes, precision machining and textile ERP.
Our DNA or main characteristics are R&D and service. Our strategy is to offer our customers the right equipment to produce what their own markets ask. Within this framework, we are focusing on energy, raw materials, water and chemical savings and on recycling processes.
What efforts has UCMTF made post-pandemic for its members?
We have organised two seminars, in Poland and Belarus. We have redesigned our website and made it a very convenient hub to visit our members’ websites. We have helped our members design new marketing tools incorporating virtual presentations, and we have shown these on our booth at Techtextil in Frankfurt.
How do you envisage the future for UCMTF?
We are a trade association grouping the French textile equipment manufacturers. As such, we are a member of CEMATEX and therefore have an important role in the decision-making process of this European association which owns the ITMA brands. We provide our members economic information and represent them at European and French levels.
We provide logistical support to our members to help them select the shows where they will exhibit and enhance their marketing efforts through seminars.
In India too, we have organised such seminars in places like Delhi and Surat, which attracted more than 300 textile companies from Delhi, Panipat, Ludhiana, Amritsar, Ahmedabad, Silvassa, Vapi, Baroda, Vadodara, etc. Our goal is to do all this even better.
Any other point that you would like to share, especially in view of the upcoming ITMA fair?
I would like to share with you a proud moment for the French textile equipment. Kristian Blummenfelt, the Norwegian athlete won the Men’s Triathlon Olympic Gold Medal. At that time, I did not know that the Trimtex Skinsuit he was wearing for swimming, cycling and running was made of a fabric designed and produced by the French company Payen. Even more: to dye and finish the fabric, Payen is using a machine from one of our members, Alliance. It dyes and finishes the fabric which incorporates an unusually high percentage of elastane covered polymer.
A highly technical finishing equipment for a highly technical fabric and, at the end of the story, a Gold Medal!
I trust that many customers will award us “gold medals” during next ITMA. It will be an honour and a pleasure to welcome them at our booths.
What kind of support has the government provided post-pandemic to help the textile machinery industry?
During the pandemic, our factories had to nearly close down due to sanitary precautions but also for lack of orders, even of spare parts as worldwide our customers’ own factories closed for weeks and even months. Our government helped us with financial compensations particularly to keep our skilled workforce. This was really important as our strategy has always been to have very stable collaborators, continuing education and internal promotion. This is very positive to establish a mutual understanding relationship with our customers and go beyond the day-to-day business. It also helped us to rebound quickly.
