42,000 visitors attend Techtextil & Texprocess

May 09, 2015 - Germany

Around 42,000 visitors from 116 countries visited Techtextil and Texprocess, the twin fairs held in Germany from May 4-7, 2015.

“Altogether, 1,662 exhibitors from 54 countries presented their new technical textiles, nonwovens and processing technologies for textile and flexible materials,” a press release from the organiser Messe Frankfurt said.

95 per cent of Texprocess visitors and 96 per cent of Techtextil visitors rated their time there as having been well or very well spent of whom more than one in two visitors came from outside Germany.

The top visitor nations after Germany were Italy, France, Turkey, Great Britain, Poland, Netherlands and Spain, while visitor numbers increased from Egypt, Bangladesh, China, Portugal, Romania and Spain.

With 273 exhibitors, Texprocess, saw a display of product spectrum stretching from design and cutting, via sewing, joining, embroidering and knitting, to finishing, textile printing, logistics and IT.

The range of technical textiles and nonwovens to be seen at Techtextil was once again characterised by application diversity.

These innovative fibres find applications in agricultural, automotive, construction, apparel, energy and medical fields.

“Without textiles and nonwovens, there would be virtually no trains unless passengers wanted to sit on bare metal”, said Eike Eberle, vice president of Sioen Coated Fabrics, Shanghai.

Techtextil exhibitors also presented synthetic fibres for covering stadiums, trucks and goods-wagon tarpaulins, as well as non-combustible glass-fibre mats for seats, flooring and luggage racks.

In addition to multi-function jackets that can communicate, warm and illuminate, other products displayed were embroidered electrodes for long-term ECGs and an artificial womb for premature babies.

One of the top subjects at Texprocess was Industry 4.0, which is a fully-automatic, digitalised and decentralised production.

“Industry 4.0 has a great potential for the garment and leather technology sector, which needs fast and fully-integrated production processes,” Dr Andreas Seidl, CEO of Human Solutions AG said.

In addition to cost optimisation, these new machines also save energy and are environmentally friendly.

Accordingly, fully integrated sewing and fixing machines, as well as cloud-based 3D product development were among the new products to be seen at Texprocess.

The 1st Innovative Apparel Show proved to be a magnet for all participants interested in new materials and processing technologies, and attracted around 500 trade visitors per show on all four days.

“Universities and fashion schools involved presented fascinating and aesthetically pleasing hybrids of fashion and technical textiles,” Olaf Schmidt, vice president - textiles at Messe Frankfurt said. (AR)