Picanol launched Optimax-i Rapier Machine at a successful open-house event. Picanol looks back on a successful Open House at its headquarters in Ieper where it presented its new rapier technologies. In the first week of September, the Picanol team gave a live demonstration of the OptiMax-i, its new rapier machine. This open house also saw Picanol providing a sneak preview of its new TerryMax-i rapier-weaving machine for terry cloth. Almost 300 visitors from more than 25 different countries attended the Open House in Ieper. The new rapier machines will be making their international debuts at the ITMA Milano fair in November 2015, where Picanol will be presenting its new technologies in Hall 1, Booth D 101. “It has been a pleasure to be able to demonstrate over the past few days our new rapier technologies to our many European customers. Following the strong interest of our customers in our new rapier offerings, we decided to organize a pre-launch event in anticipation of ITMA Milano. With the new OptiMax-i we have set a new benchmark in the rapier industry because this is the fastest industrial rapier-weaving machine in the world. Thanks to its innovative design, the OptiMax-i is also the most versatile and user-friendly rapier machine with the lowest energy consumption on the market! It can be adapted to a wide range of fabrics, which means that it provides weavers with a great deal of flexibility in reacting to changes in market requirements” explained Johan Verstraete, VP Sales, Marketing & Services at Picanol. Anotherhighlight of the Open House at Picanol was the sneak preview of the Terry- Max-i, a new machine for weaving terry fabrics that is for the first time available in a rapier format. In line with its new marketing campaign ‘Let’s grow together’, in which Picanol uses visuals of children during their different stages of growing up in life, a group of children of some of the Picanol employees had the honor of collectively unveiling the new OptiMax-i rapier machine. “At Picanol, we live up to the slogan ‘Let’s grow together’ as we are convinced that we can help our customers to grow. We’ve done it in the past and we are very determined to continue to do so in the future. We offer a wide variety of machines and services that enable weavers to create every type of fabric imaginable. As growing is the essence of doing business, this is why we endeavor to make our machines more energy-efficient, more versatile, user-friendly and easy to set. As ITMA Milano draws closer, we will be revealing even more of our technological breakthroughs at our website www. letsgrowtogether.be,” said Verstraete. Picanol weaving machines are a synthesis of technological know-how and experience that has been built up over almost 80 years. This has resulted in more than 350,000 machines being produced. Picanol is proud to confirm that it currently has more than 175,000 weaving machines running in some 2,600 weaving mills worldwide.