Karl Mayer is targeting an upturn in business in Brazil with a number of small business units and larger, well established warp knitters looking to invest in the latest technology. Brazil is certainly a market with a long tradition for Karl Mayer with the company counting a number of large-scale, vertically integrated warp knitting mills as its customers. However, as the Brazilian market begins to look more stable after several years of recession, Karl Mayer is also looking to supply smaller units with new machines as they look to widen their product portfolios.
“We also want to appeal to smaller customers in order to increase the range of products on offer,” says Nelson Da Cruz, a Regional Sales Manager at Karl Mayer. “As a result of national protectionist policies, most of the products manufactured in Brazilian warp knitting companies are sold on the domestic market. The market been experiencing a recession since 2015, but this now seems to have bottomed out.”
Da Cruz is confident that there will be a recovery in the near future, expectations that are backed up by the number of orders placed for tricot machines over the last few months. “We must supply products for niche sectors and meet the specific requirements of this country,” Da Cruz says, adding that as well as not focusing on mass production, nor are domestic manufacturers thought of as pioneering innovators. “Instead of this, they tend to follow trends in areas that are already well-established and where there is no strong competition,” says Da Cruz.
An opportunity to increase its business in the region will be August’s Febratex exhibition, the Brazilian Textile Industry Fair which takes place in Blumenau. Karl Mayer will join more than 2,400 other national and international exhibitors at the show where it can be found on stand 67/68/81/82, sector 1, street 6, alongside its regional agent, MBR – Máquinas Têxteis Bernhard e Rampani. On show will be the one of the first high-speed tricot machines, type HKS 3-M, with a working width of 130 ins and the KAMCOS 2 software platform.
Karl Mayer says it will also be targeting its exhibits at weft knitting companies where the HKS 3-M will be processing elastane to produce a stretch filet fabric for use in sportswear. “This product and the performance of the machine are designed to offer producers of weft-knitted fabrics an attractive, alternative technology,” says Da Cruz.
