More than 240 German exhibitors are present in Milan, making Germany one of the largest exhibiting nations at ITMA textile machinery exhibition that started in Italy this week. The sustainable German technology and innovation will be presented to more than 100,000 trade professionals, who are expected to visit the exhibition in the next seven days.

“VDMA and Blue Competence members provide best practice examples for resource and energy saving, sustainable corporate culture and strategies, integration of functions, automation and steps towards Industry 4.0,” said Regina Brueckner, Managing Director Brueckner Trockentechnik and Chairperson of the VDMA Textile Machinery Association.

“Additionally we support our customers with technological advice over the whole manufacturing process as we believe that first class machines also need first class consulting and support.”

Energy efficiency

Energy efficiency is still a major topic in the textile industry. Therefore the German industry presents a new edition of the VDMA energy efficiency guide on textile machinery. In addition, German experts not only present their innovations but demonstrate the energy savings along the entire textile production chain of well-defined textile product categories.

Calculations cover the full textile production cycle of cotton T-shirts, functional shirts or textile billboards, hygienic nonwovens and woven architectural fabrics.

“These five product examples stand for thousands of textile products. Total energy savings of up to 30% are possible by using German state-of-the-art technology compared to the machinery generation 10 years ago,” explained Karin Schmidt, Head of Technology of VDMA Textile Machinery.

Benefits of German technology

Throughout one year warp-knitted fabric of roundabout 400,000 tons is produced worldwide for large-area advertising. This quantity would be sufficient to transform the overall metropolis of Guangzhou – covering at least 3,442km² – into a giant textile billboard.

If German machinery technology of latest generation was used exclusively for the production of these textile advertising media, enormous energy savings would be possible for each individual process step, according to the VDMA report. They are said to sum up to 26% compared with German technology one decade ago.

In the scope of their sustainability efforts, the German manufacturers of textile machines, components and accessories have reduced the energy consumption by 28% and the water consumption by 33% for the production of jersey fabric during the last decade. From yarn manufacturing to finished jersey fabric – German technology is said to make energy bills shrink.

Sustainable knitting innovations

Mayer & Cie., for example, adopted a new technical approach in order to support its commitment to sustainability. The company is planning to launch a new generation of circular knitting machines fitted with the company’s proprietary Spinit technology, a combination of spin and knit.

The innovative feature of this method consists of integrating a part of the spinning process in the machine, before or during the knitting process. With Spinit systems, the new generation of machines only require the intermediate yarn stage, so an entire process step can be omitted.

“The entire machine park involved in this process is then no longer part of the plan,” explained Benjamin Mayer, Managing Director, Mayer & Cie. “A company that carries out the entire manufacturing chain from treating the cotton to the knitted product needs up to 40% less space to do the same job. That is the really huge advantage of this technology.”

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