The textile industry is constantly evolving, and industry leaders must stay updated on the latest trends and innovations. To achieve this, Saurer, a leading textile machinery company, hosted for the first time the OpenHouse 2024 event on January 12 and 13. This new format brought together industry experts from academia, consulting and industry, showcasing the latest advancements in textile technology and fostering collaborative discussions on prevailing megatrends.
The event featured an impressive lineup of esteemed speakers, including Prof. Chokri Cherif from Dresden Technical University in Germany and Prof. Thomas Gries from RWTH Aachen University in Germany, who shared their expertise and insights into sustainable business opportunities and future developments in the industry. Dr Uwe Rondé, Group CEO of Saurer, presented an outlook on the company’s latest innovations and its commitment to supporting customers in energy-saving, digitalisation, automation, and recycling. The remarkable speaker’s program included representatives from industry partners such as Textechno Herbert Stein (Felix Liebhold) and Tailorlux (Tobias Herzog). Additionally, ITMF (Christian Schindler) provided an outlook on textile market development.
Customers and other visitors had the chance to explore the new Saurer Sustainability Hub, an innovation space that showcases and explores advancements in textile manufacturing. It includes a showroom, a spinning development centre, textile technology consulting services, and a machine research centre. This hub serves as a platform for fostering innovative solutions, sustainability, and collaboration within the textile industry.
One of the highlights was the world-premiere presentations of Saurer’s innovative machinery: from the machine-based automation of the BD480 and BD8 machines with doffer to the Autocoro Melange. Saurer has developed a technology for rotor spinning that for the first time allows the production of melange yarns with a flexible mixing ratio directly on the Autocoro. The semi-automatic rotor spinning machine BD Filea specialises in the production of elastane covered yarns. These innovative yarns are suitable for a wide range of applications, including stretch fabrics for garments. Notably, the spinning of 100% cotton on Autoairo also drew significant attention from visitors.
The Saurer OpenHouse 2024 also featured factory tours and workshops on the Saurer Academy, providing valuable knowledge-sharing opportunities, as well as presentations on Saurer’s digital solutions, including the digital Senses platform and the e-commerce solution, Secos.
In addition, partner companies, such as Groz-Beckert, Kelheim Fibres GmbH, Renewcell, Reseda Binder, Rimtex Industries, RoZa Plastik San. ve Tic. Ltd. Åžti., Tailorlux GmbH – integrity solutions, Temsan Air, Textechno Herbert Stein, and Welker Vakuum showcased their contributions to sustainable textile production in a small exhibition. With DZ Bank also the financial sector was present.
Saurer donated an Autocoro Spinntester to the TU Dresden for research purposes, which was officially handed over to the keynote speaker Dr Chokri Cherif by Dr Uwe Ronde at the OpenHouse event.
The central concept of the event was to establish a space for fruitful discussions and idea-sharing that could help tackle the challenges faced by the industry. The visitors’ feedback was overwhelmingly positive and showed that the textile industry needs this kind of informative exchange.
