Christian Guinet
Secretary General French Textile Equipment Manufacturers’ Association (UCMTF)
Industry 4.0 is a Reality and Metaverse is Already Developed
UCMTF is the trade association grouping the French textile machinery manufacturers. France is the sixth largest textile equipment exporter worldwide and UCMTF members are well known for their standard portfolios, as well as tailor-made equipment. It will be an honour and a pleasure to welcome customers at our members’ booths at ITMA 2023, says Christian Guinet, Secretary General of UCMTF, the French Textile Equipment Manufacturers’ Association, in an interview with Fibre2Fashion.
Has the French textile machinery industry revived to pre-pandemic levels?
After the pandemic, our sales rebounded by more than 50 per cent in 2021 to a “normal” €1 billion annual turnover. I do not have yet the precise 2022 figures, but they should be around this figure both for orders intakes and sales.
At the beginning of 2023, our order books were quite good. Most of our members cannot deliver new orders before the second half of 2023 and new orders are coming in at a reasonable pace. So, we do not have any reason to be anxious about our near future. For the long run, we believe that the apparel and home textiles productions will at least increase with the world population and the economic growth and that many new applications will fuel the technical textile sector. Recycling processes may dampen the production of new fibres, but recycling is also a new sector by itself which needs as many equipment and workforce as the more traditional sectors.
Do you see a shift in the buyer demand post-pandemic in terms of textile technology preferences and order quantities?
Our customers have to adapt more and more quickly to their own markets’ demands. They have to offer new products with zero defects and less environmental footprints. Then they need flexible equipment and many services from us. Our members have to be agile to design, produce and service the equipment which are needed even for small orders. As they are mostly SMEs, run by real entrepreneurs, they can sustain this strategy.
How did the recent energy crisis affect the French textile machinery industry?
From a short-term point of view, the energy crisis, and to be precise, the price increases of energy we have to support, have a negative effect on our margins. For the long term, I think it will have a positive effect. One of our members, just a few days ago, showed me the energy savings from the replacement of an equipment he had computed for a customer. The pay back of the equipment he was offering was less than a year compared to the machine which was installed in the customer’s factory.
The equipment we sell may run for many years but the old equipment are not energy efficient. New investments have very quick paybacks. So, this is a real argument to invest for manufacturers, and an additional chance for us to sell new equipment.
What is the current strength of members at UCMTF?
We are particularly strong in long fibre spinning (wool, acrylic …), yarn twisting and control (including technical yarns), space-dyeing, heat setting for carpet yarns, carpet systems, bleaching and hydro-extractor equipment, dyeing and finishing, felts and belts for finishing processes, precision machining and textile ERP.
Our DNA or main characteristics are R&D and service. Our strategy is to offer our customers the right equipment to produce what their own markets ask. Within this framework, we are focusing on energy, raw materials, water and chemical savings and on recycling processes.
What efforts has UCMTF made post-pandemic for its members?
We have organised two seminars, in Poland and Belarus. We have redesigned our website and made it a very convenient hub to visit our members’ websites. We have helped our members design new marketing tools incorporating virtual presentations, and we have shown these on our booth at Techtextil in Frankfurt.
What kind of support has the government provided post-pandemic to help the textile machinery industry?
During the pandemic, our factories had to nearly close down due to sanitary precautions but also for lack of orders, even of spare parts as worldwide our customers’ own factories closed for weeks and even months. Our government helped us with financial compensations particularly to keep our skilled workforce. This was really important as our strategy has always been to have very stable collaborators, continuing education and internal promotion. This is very positive to establish a mutual understanding relationship with our customers and go beyond the day-to-day business. It also helped us to rebound quickly.
DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
