The Textile Magazine
OctoBER 2011
|
113
and orders. In their opinion ITMA-
2011 surpassed their expectations.
Several of the OEMs had big and
expensive stands and presented ma-
chines in operation. It is reported
that around 47 per cent of the visi-
tors were from India. This confrms
the fact that India is going to be the
textile capital in the coming years.
In my opinion there would have
been around 5,000-6,000 visi-
tors from India. Majority of them
were visiting knitting, weaving and
processing stalls. In the spinning
area, the number of visitors from
India was much less. Visitors from
south India too numbered less than
usual as the present condition is not
encouraging enough. Majority of
the visitors who wanted to know the
latest developments visited the trade
fair and went on a sight-seeing trip
in Barcelona and Europe.
Oerlikon Schlafhorst presented
a new rotor spinning machine with
single drive motor technology in-
stead of driving with belts. Almost
all the main OEMs of textile print-
ing placed the latest developments
of inkjet printing machines at the
center of their offer. New actors,
mainly from paper printing busi-
ness, decided to move from textile
printing business. It is quite clear
that the textile printing machine
market is shifting to ink-jet.
Mayer & Cie exhibited its new cir-
cular knitting machine which makes
knitted fabric directly from roving
without the necessity of spinning
the yarn. There was always a huge
crowd in the company stall. Pylong
exhibited in its stall the same type
of machine. These machines are still
under development or getting fne-
tuned to be ready for marketing in
future.
Overall the exhibitors are happy
that their presence helped to estab-
lish their brands and the quality of
visitors was also very high.
Regarding the exhibition venue,
one could say that it is one of the
best in Europe. Indian ITMA of-
fcials conducted a road show on
ITME-2012, and I am sure it would
be a great event. Let us hope all the
present crises in the textile industry
would be over by then.
w
Mr. Viking Eswaran, Managing Director, Viking Group and Mr. Chandran of Eveready Spinning Mills,
along with
Mr. N. Subramaniam
ITMA 2011
[exclusive feature]