Karl Mayer was present at two key events in India recently where the warp knitting machine builder was able to outline its latest terry and tricot technology to the country’s textile firms. India is an important market for Karl Mayer. In 2015, the Southeast Asia country ordered more machines than ever before, which makes it one of its three most important sales regions.
Business is taking off again after rather muted demand over the last two years. “India has a population of about 1.3 bn, who all need clothes,” says Karl Mayer’s Sales Manager, Mark Smith, highlighting the simple truth about what is driving the Indian economy. This country is growing and Karl Mayer is in an ideal position to support this development. As well as offering high-speed machines, Karl Mayer can also offer its Indian customers expertise in warp knitting and new ideas for textile products. For example, Karl Mayer continues to participate as a speaker in the symposia held by the VDMA. The conference entitled “German Technology meets Indian Textiles and Nonwovens” took place recently on 15 and 16 May 2018 in Mumbai.
Karl Mayer also regularly organises its own Tricot Circle events there. Indian textile specialist were once again invited to gather inspiration for new ideas from the latest developments in warp knitting on 17 May in Daman and on 18 May in Amritsar. The VDMA Symposium in India included 36 application-oriented papers presented by more than 30 well-known companies. Karl Mayer was showing its TERRY.ECO concept for warp knitting. This system for the ecological and economical production of terry goods went down well with the visitors. There were about 100 delegates in the auditorium, including many representatives from weaving companies. “The feedback was much better than we expected. Many questions were asked, which showed that weavers have understood the advantages of warp knitting for producing terry goods and are now getting to grips with the possibilities,” explained Smith.
The 3rd Tricot Circle held by Karl Mayer was well attended by just under 135 delegates with the focal topics covering the possibilities offered by high-speed tricot machines for designing a wide variety of apparel fabrics and for producing terry goods.
Many warp knitting companies in India are concentrating on producing embroidery grounds and simple fabrics for saris. However, the HKS 4-M EL can do so much more than that, as Klaus Schulze showed in his lecture. This specialist in textile product development at Karl Mayer demonstrated various transparent fabrics featuring different mesh patterns in the ground and superimposed geometric designs produced by the versatile HKS model. Possible ground constructions include classic tricot types, such as honeycomb, diamond and atlas mesh construction.
Atlas and filet tulle grounds featuring integrated diamond patterns with the look of raschel-knitted fabrics can also be worked. The delegates listened very intently to what was being said and asked many technical questions. “The patterning possibilities of the four-bar HKS machine will make it popular in India,” says Smith with some certainty. But a new collection of designs produced on the HKS 3-M also attracted a great deal of attention. The lightweight, voile-like fabrics are particularly eye-catching, thanks to their fine, transparent ground and dense, striped pattern blocks, and gave the visitors ideas on how to use the potential of their machines even more effectively. The HKS 3-M is already extremely well established in India.
As another highlight, Klaus Schulze demonstrated the possibilities of producing warp-knitted terry fabrics. The TM 4-TS EL is particularly interesting for this textile nation. The delegates were also interested in a paper describing a beach towel made from a double-face fabric with a cotton side for drying and a side made from polyester microfibres with cut-open loops and a colour-printed design for lying on.
Other topics also generated great deal of interest and raised many questions, including innovative textile products manufactured on the HKS machine range for the athleisure sector, intelligently designed, stylish RSJ fabrics for sportswear and leisurewear, and Karl Mayer’s Virtual Showroom. Karl Mayer’s representatives were optimistic from the feedback they received from the delegates. “The market will probably recover in 2018/19,” concluded Schulze. Karl Mayer organised the event with the support of its regional agent, A.T.E.
