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The Textile Magazine
JUly 2012
South-Asian countries. As the in-
stalled base was steadily growing, a
local training centre was established
in Bandung, Indonesia. This served
also as a servicing and spare parts
facility.
The next step in the history of
Picanol in China was the setting
up of PST, Picanol Suzhou Textile
Machinery Works, in 1994, thus
starting its career
as a Chinese textile
machinery manufac-
turer.
PST was Picanol’s
first production line
outside Belgium,
and the technology
and organisation
were based entirely
on the assembly
concept employed
at the company’s
headquarters in
Ieper. Today PST
houses a complete
production unit with
three assembly lines
for four product
types, a mechatron-
ics division, and a
sales, service and
spare parts organiza-
tion. The majority of
the Chinese management, engineers
and technicians have been trained
in Belgium.
Another bridgehead in the Pi-
canol organization is India. With
headoffice in Delhi and branch
offices in textile hubs like Mumbai
and Coimbatore, the company has
spread itself closer to the customer.
Picanol already had a good pres-
ence in the Indian market since
1956 and its machines were seen at
almost all major textile and apparel
companies. For Picanol, India is
one of the top markets, next only to
China, and out of all its networks,
the Asian region particularly has
helped the group in sustaining
during the downturn of the global
crises.
One of the big assets of this
cross-border entrepreneurship is
the mixture of drawing upon the
know-how and quality standards
from the Picanol Group, combined
with good understanding of its local
customers.
With more than 150 engineers
and strong R&D teams headquar-
tered in Belgium, Picanol invests
heavily in R&D activities every
year. Its R&D aims not just at
development and production of the
most advanced weaving machines,
but also achieving the most profit-
able weaving process in the world.
Picanol offers seven types of
weaving machines: the OptiMax,
GT-Max and GTXplus with rapier
technology, the OMNI plus Sum-
mum, TERRY plus 800, OMNI
plus 800 TC and the OMNI plus-X
with airjet insertion technology.
Together, these machines cover the
full spectrum of textiles, including
apparel, household and technical
fabrics. The high degree of digitiza-
tion of all these machines, together
with their Sumo main drive, ensures
a lower weaving cost, higher qual-
ity of the fabrics produced, greater
flexibility and exceptional ease of
operation in comparison with other
weaving machines.
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ITMA Asia + CITME 2012