Seminars held to connect with customers
Monfongs organised two seminars in the second week of November, one in Ahmedabad and the other in Chandigarh. The Textile Magazine caught up with Mr. Alex Wan, Managing Director at Monforts Fong’s Textile Machinery Co. Ltd. (Monfongs) and Mr. Kurt Van Wersch, Senior Consultant at A. Monforts Textilmaschinen GmbH of Germany, at the Ahmedabad seminar for an exclusive interview.
Mr. Alex Wan, Managing Director, Monforts Fong’s Textile Machinery Co. Ltd., (right) and Mr. Kurt Van Wersch, Senior Consultant at A. Monforts Textilmaschinen GmbH of Germany
Explaining the reason for holding the seminars, Mr. Wan said: “This is not the first seminar in India. The earlier ones were held in July last in Tirupur, Surat and Ludhiana. This time the seminar was held in Chandigarh immediately after Ahmedabad. We launched our products in early 2013 and, through these seminars; we want to bring greater awareness of Monfongs products among the Indian textile clusters.”
The Hong Kong-based Monfongs Chief added: “Monforts basically is an anchor stone in the textile finishing industry and, although our machines are manufactured in China, at the heart is the German technology, and the machines are produced at a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in China.”
Monfongs is a joint venture of the German textile machinery manufacturer, A. Monforts Textilmaschinen GmbH & Co., KG Mönchengladbach and Fong’s Industries Co. Ltd., Hong Kong. A. Monforts is now however a subsidiary of CHTC Fong’s Industries, which, is turn, is a subsidiary of the biggest global textile machinery group, China Hi-Tech Corporation (CHTC).
Monfongs has registered consistent growth since inception. A manufacturing complex covering over 7,000 sq. mts. was set up at Shenzhen in 2000, followed by a newly built plant of 15,000 sq. mts. in October last to cope with the growing demand. Its product range now covers stenter frames, shrinking and continuous dyeing range and relaxation dryer.
According to Mr. Wan, with over 100 years of experience and technology in textile finishing machinery of A. Monforts and integrated with the extensive sales network of Fong’s, the Monfongs stenter frame has garnered a good marketshare in China in a short period of time.
Asked about the Indian market for Monfongs, he said: “We launched our products in India at the beginning of 2013. In the two years we are moving slowly but surely by creating space for our products in India.”
Mr. Wan added: “India has always remained an important market for us. The Indian textile exporting sector is one of the biggest in the world and remains important for Monforts. After Fong’s acquired Monforts, we are now in a position to offer more competitive products with high German technology to Indian consumers, and we also market our machines in India at very competitive rates.”
He disclosed that A. Monforts has set up a new Advanced Technology Centre (ATC) at its plant in Moenchengladbach, Germany. “The state-of-the-art centre has been set up at a cost of €3 million and has one line of continuous dyeing range (width of 2m+), one stenter for knitted fabrics and one line to process technical textile fabrics that includes a coating device and a stretching device where we are able to do coating for water-based as well as solvent-based textiles and also process sample fabrics on these machines on request from customers.”
Explaining why a customer should prefer a Monfongs machine to one from a competitor, Mr. Wan said: “Monforts and Monfongs are supplying machines from both the Monforts plant in Austria and the Monfongs Zhongshan plant in China. Both these manufacturing facilities are constantly benchmarking themselves with each other to offer quality machines”.
In the last two years, Monfongs has sold five machines in India and four machines are currently under installation. Monfongs has stationed trained engineers in China, with its India agent, A.T.E. Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. planning to strengthen the team of engineers, while alongside, they also have engineers visiting India from their Chinese headquarters at regular intervals.
Monfongs offers its integrated heat recovery systems for their new machines, while for existing machines, they offer external energy towers, which can be retrofit on existing machines and according to Monfongs, both systems are effective energy saving tools which will help customers to conserve energy.
“Monforts and Monfongs products are designed to fully meet the stringent environmental norms. The Twin-Air patented design of the air circulation system guarantees even distribution of heat energy across the entire fabric width, thus resulting in optimum utilization of power of the fan motors,” he said.
Further, the Monformatic controlling system is capable of controlling the whole machine in its optimum running condition. The Qualitex Programmable Logic Control comes with a tele-service functionality, which allows Monfongs to diagnose problems of machines without the physical presence of its service engineers.
He said: “Exhaust air cleaning is an area which we are intensively looking at, where evaporated excessive chemicals, dyestuffs, silicone oil and solid particles will be cleaned up totally, prior to being discharged into the atmosphere. Such a system reduces contaminated atmosphere substantially. Further, in Germany we have strong energy conservation and waste water laws, so we have to develop machines with high specifications. We are now very happy to know that similar laws are being enforced in India and China and that our machines meet the new norms set by the two respective governments”.
On launching new technologies at the upcoming ITMA 2015 in Milan, Mr. Wan quipped: “There are machines under development which we will launch at ITMA, particularly the novel air cleaning system.”