Today, the spinning sector has been going through a demanding and challenging period.
While the spinning development cycles in the markets becoming shorter and shorter, technological leadership must be measured by its ability to combine efficiency and quality. The formula for success in the industry lies behind the response to a provocative question: How much does it cost to produce one kilogram of yarn or one square meter of nonwovens? Trützschler, the technology leader in spinning machinery production, already knows the answer thanks to their wealth of experience that they gained from a series of challenging effects such as changing market trends, new technologies, economic crisis and even war. The Trützschler spirit lighted up by Paul Heinrich Trützschler by a forge and metal working shop in Crimmitschau on August 1, 1888, for about 126 years now, has today ended up with a corporate competence in the textile machinery sector with four different fields of business. Tearing machines and cotton cleaning machines inspired today’s state-of-art spinning and fiber preparation machinery of Trützschler Spinning, which is located in Mönchengladbach. The founding of Trützschler Card Clothing in 2003 was based on an acquisition of the clothing specialist Hollingsworth. The business division Trützschler Nonwovens emerged from the former companies Fleissner (dryer, hydroentanglement), Erko (opener, roller card, crosslapper, needling machine) and Bastian (winder). The segments of Fleissner (machines for the production of man-made fibers) and SwissTex AG (machines for industrial and carpet yarns) make up the fourth business division, Trützschler Man-Made Fibers. Truetzschler Group, which is managed by the 4th generation family members Heinrich Trützschler and Dr. Michael Schürenkrämer since 1991, currently has approximately 3,000 employees worldwide at 9 production sites. The development of Truetzschler over the course of 126 years and four generations inspires a true success story. The most important factors for this have been, and still are, high innovative strength, close customer relations, good service, long-term success orientation, and the flexibility of a family-owned company. The successful marketing strategy of the company that has been running since the beginning and Head of Marketing Mr. Herman Selker, who manages this successful strategy effectively and impressively since 1991 should also be mentioned here without question. Selker, who is a textile engineer by training, has worked for Schubert & Salzer, Ingolstadt (1978 – 1985 in research and applied technologies) before joining Trützschler in 1985 as Manager of applied technologies.
POSITION OF SPINNING INDUSTRY AND TRUETZSCHLER IN WORLD
Selker emphasizes that spinning is a constantly developing business with an annual growth rate of about 3,5% due to the increasing population worldwide and the consumption per capita, and also points out that they consider themselves lucky to be in a growing business that has a future. Herman Selker states that the main markets for spinning has moved from North America and Europe to Asia, Southeast East Asia and Turkey, and says, “Still Europe and Africa is very weak. The main business appears to be in Asia and this will continue. The main markets for spinning today are China and India, which are ranking as Number one and Number two markets. Growing in spinning, more or less means to grow in China and India. In both markets we run our own companies and we produce machines for the local markets. On the other hand, the activities in countries such as Brazil, Mexico and the United States showed the signs of coming back a little bit in the recent years. After a few years of low investments there, we also see more investments in these areas in the last two years.” Estimating that the spinning industry of China will be reduced somehow in the future, because they see that spinning in China is moving to other countries, Selker says, “Although today’s investments for these activities are provided by China, the setup of the new installations develops outside of China in countries such as Vietnam, Korea or Uzbekistan. For example, recently we had a project of a Chinese company investing in the United States.”
POSITION OF THE SPINNING INDUSTRY AND TRUETZSCHLER IN TURKEY
Selker’s observations indicate that Turkey is a very, very interesting country in terms of spinning markets. In his estimation, whereas a decrease is observed somewhere in the garment markets of Turkey; the textile production area is becoming stronger and moving to the opposite direction accordingly. “So, last and this year was an excellent year for us in Turkey thanks to our customers in spinning is still investing a lot there. We see a continuous investment in spinning capacities, which includes not only the new installations, but also the modernization of the existing installations mainly in the South area of Turkey such as in the cities of Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras and Kayseri,” says Selker and adds that Turkey is stable at the moment and will continue at this level, which also may increase to some degree in the future.
TRUETZSCHLER GROUP EVEN MORE STRONGER WITH BASTIAN AND SWISSTEX
Truetzschler have met their customers needs for winders and slitters by acquiring Bastian, also has gained an even more stronger position regarding manmade fibers by acquiring Swiss company SwissTex AG in the recent past. Trützschler Group runs the company Trützschler Nonwovens in the nonwovens and technical textiles field, where the main market is Western Europe and Germany leads the market inside of Western Europe, with production facilities in Frankfurt, Egelsbach and in the north Dülmen, and there they offer complete lines from fiber opening up to web bonding technologies. Herman Selker, states that the fact that drive them to acquire Bastian, lies behind their weak point, which used to be the winders that are normally needed at the end of the lines and their customers requirement of buying them somewhere else since these winders were not available from Trützschler. “There we have had the chance to take over the activities of Bastian, which is a very famous producer of winders with a long history. Besides, Bastian was not only active in the field of nonwoven products and they have also a strong market in the film industry. This is why they have also a special technology for slitting all kind of films including not only very thin films, but also relatively thicker films for the credit cards, for example. Finally, we acquired this company all together with its’ employees and know-how. Now, we can offer our own combined machines for winding and slitting at the same time. Thanks to this acquirement, we completed our non-woven lines with the last step with the winding and slitting,” adds the Head of Marketing of Truetzschler. He also pointed out that a part of the former Fleissner Company has already been producing and offering fiber-producing installations for polyester mainly and remarked that this part of Fleissner is separated to Trützschler Man-Made Fibers then and appeared as the 4th line of business of the Trützschler Group. Having stated, “Finally, Trützschler Man-Made Fibers took over the activities of the former SwissTex AG in order to grow stronger in industrial yarns on one side and BCF yarns for carpets at the other side. Thanks to this acquirement, we are now able to offer almost complete production range in the area of man made fibers. What is more, we also have a production site in Switzerland,” Selker also explains the fact behind the SwissTex AG acquirement.
TWO MAJOR SUSTAINABILITY ASPECTS: MATERIAL SAVING AND POWER SAVING
With respect to sustainability in the manufacturing of spinning machinery, Truetzschler is always having two discussions with their customers and thus focusing on two main activity fields, which are material utilization and power saving. “As you already know, cotton is a product, but not a perfect product. We have to clean and to prepare the cotton for spinning and during this process we create waste. As Trützschler, we developed several processes to reduce this waste to an absolutely minimum amount. This means not to lose spinnable fibers, but to separate waste. We developed some special technologies, which are very good compared to the existing technologies in the market,” says Selker. One of these technologies include the waste recycling machines that can clean waste in the spinning mills, from blow room and from cards and separate this waste into spinnable fibers and into secondary waste. If these fibers are not suitable for spinning, then for example they can be used in hygienic or medical areas so to produce special products. Also, here Trützschler offers complete systems for secondary fibers from bleaching up to producing products such as cosmetic pads and ear pads for example. Second technology that Trützschler developed with regard to material utilization is the special optical sensors to monitor how many fibres and how many trash particles are contained in the waste. “All our customers with the optical Monitoring System WASTE CONTROL can be sure that they are not losing spinnable fibers, in other words good fibers,” says Herman Selker. Power saving is another aspect of Trützschler Spinning with regard to sustainability. “We achieved to reduce the power consumption per kilogram card sliver from generation to generation. For example, TC11, which is the carding machine that we introduced in ITMA 2011 in Barcelona 3 years ago, is the carding machine in the market with the lowest power consumption. Power consumption is a general trend in textile production. More and more of our customers are looking also in this direction. Ten years ago there was no interest about the power consumption. But today it is a point of discussion and there we have interesting solutions,” adds Selker. Selker also emphasizes that the high water requirement in cotton production would make the cotton producing more complicated in the future and says, “When this dilemma is considered, I would say that polyester is the key for more green.” He also points out that the growing is not realized in the field of cotton, viscose or rayon, but in the field of polyester when the continuously growing fiber consumption is considered.
