Friday 29th of March 2024
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Interview with Ms. Cornelia Buchwalder, Secretary General of Swiss Textile Machinery Association. 2022-03-09 06:00:01


Interview with Ms. Cornelia Buchwalder, Secretary General of Swiss Textile Machinery Association.

“Egypt has developed into a very important sales market for the Swiss textile machinery industry and is by far the most important market in this region”

  • What are the new developments and innovations introduced by the Swiss Textile Machinery in 2022?

The fields of efficiency, sustainability and digitalisation remain some of the fields in which further improvements and innovations will also take place in 2022. Personally, I am very much looking forward to ITMA 2023 in Milan. This is always a great showcase to see the innovations and developments in the textile and textile machinery world.

  • Can you see a shift in the Swiss Machinery to support sustainability and green environment demands?

Sustainability is a big and very important topic. It has been for years, but now it is even more important due to the new EU strategy for sustainable textiles. As an association, we have also taken on this topic and are currently developing an individual programme for our member companies. Of course, some member companies are already very advanced in this topic, but others will certainly be able to benefit.

  • How did the COVID affect the sales of Swiss Machinery and could you see situation getting better in 2022?

Looking back to 2021, most of our members reported a very strong year. The business climate has recovered faster and stronger than could be expected. Despite this positive and rapid recovery, there were some challenges to overcome. The still complicated and highly expensive transports, the scarcity and long delivery times of raw materials and the complexity of travel planning. For Switzerland, there was also the additional challenge of the again strengthening Swiss currency, mainly compared to the Euro. As it was a very strong year, both the capacity utilisation rate and the productivity rate developed positively. The view into 2022 will be somewhat more neutral. It remains to be seen how current geopolitical developments will affect consumption and investment. In addition, the aforementioned challenges will continue to exist.

  • Industry 4.0 / digitalization how it is reflected on Swiss Machinery manufacturing?

Industry 4.0 or Industry 2025 as we call it in Switzerland offers various possibilities, be it in product or process optimization or in the development of completely new business models. Our member companies use these possibilities to generate maximum customer benefit. The pandemic in particular has shown us how important digitalisation can be. Customers and suppliers who can offer for example remote service were certainly in an advantageous situation.

  • What is the biggest market/ country for sales of Swiss Machinery?

The top five export markets in 2021 were China, Germany, Turkey, India and the USA. In 2021, the export volume from Switzerland increased by 17.4% to 599.6 million Swiss francs. However, this only shows a part of the Swiss textile machinery production. Almost all our members have production facilities in different countries such as China and India. These figures are not included in the Swiss export statistics.

  • How have you seen a development in the Egyptian textile industry in the past few years in term of purchase of textile machinery?

Egypt has developed into a very important sales market for the Swiss textile machinery industry and is by far the most important market in this region. For this reason, we also held a Swiss textile machinery symposium in the country a few years ago.

  • EGYSTITCH the biggest textile machinery exhibition is approaching in October 2022, does SWISSMEM have plans to be part of the show?

It is good to see that the various exhibitions can take place again after two years of interruption. Egystitch is an interesting fair that covers a wide range both in terms of textile technology and visitors. For the time being, there are no plans for the association to participate, but we will certainly take a closer look in the future.

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