The technical textile and nonwovens sectors came in droves to its leading international trade fair, with numbers never before seen. "Precisely because these are times of economic uncertainty, companies have been setting themselves new targets with innovative products and areas of application and have in part already managed to achieve them at Techtextil. Some eight percent more exhibitors and two percent more trade visitors represent a double plus for Techtextil, a fantastic outcome," summarises Detlef Braun, Member of the Board of Management of Messe Frankfurt, looking back over the days of the trade fair.

With exhibitor numbers representing 1,201 companies from 43 countries, the three-day trade fair began in positive mood from the outset. With an increase in visitor numbers to 23,300 (2007: 22,876), Techtextil ended its 13th edition today with a new record. "The interest among trade and professional visitors was enormous. And it is with great satisfaction that we see Techtextil extending its reputation as a hotbed of innovation for textile solutions in industry, research, medicine, environmental protection and many other fields of application," continues Braun.

Visitors and exhibitors alike perceived Techtextil to be an event full of intensive business activity and rated their participation in the trade fair as very good; over 80 percent of exhibitors were very satisfied with the extent to which they had achieved their targets for the fair. The level of orders and the number of new contacts at the show, in particular, were rated highly. There was a great deal of satisfaction, too, on the part of the visitors: 95 percent of them gave Techtextil top marks for the range of products and services on offer and the quality of the event.

Werner Zirnzak, Deputy Managing Director of the Association of the Yarns, Woven Fabrics and Technical Textiles Industry (Industrieverband Garne, Gewebe, Technische Textilien - IVGT) and Secretary of the European Technical Textile Club stated that as far as member companies in Germany and Europe are concerned, "all those exhibiting were highly satisfied with the quality and quantity of trade visitors and this characterised the excellent mood at the fair. Although industrial customers, in particular, have reduced their warehouse stock and are tending not to rebuild it, nonetheless exhibitors recorded substantial just-in-time purchases. Even in the engineering sector, the word was that, compared to the beginning of the year, the number of orders received had risen again slightly. In general, the technical textiles industry foresees a pale silver lining on the horizon for the second half of 2009 and is hoping for a slight upturn from 2010 onwards.

Karl Mayer reports success

Petra Arnold, Marketing Department, Karl Mayer Textil-Maschinenfabrik, confirms, "Customers are visiting our stand in a mood of quiet optimism and in large numbers, particularly European ones. For us, taking part in the fair was a conscious signal of the strength of our market and an avowal to the German textile machinery industry. The great thing is that our image/presence has also initiated some concrete post-fair business."

In addition to the high level of decision-making competence of the trade visitors, exhibitors praised above all the internationality of the visitors: with a 52 percent share of total visitor numbers, Techtextil has maintained the high level of internationality of previous events. 23,300 trade visitors from 85 countries travelled to Techtextil. A total of 11,200 visitors from Germany attended the event, around 500 more than the previous event. The leading nations for visitors, with higher numbers of attendees too, are: Italy, France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Turkey and Austria. The countries posting the highest number of overseas visitors, the USA, India, Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan, were roughly as well represented as in the previous year.

Stahl’s expectations exceeded

Joop Pulles, Business Manager, Stahl Europe bv, the Netherlands: "We did not attend the last two Techtextil fairs but this year decided to renew our presence in Frankfurt am Main. The global economic crisis has hit sales very badly and so we have expanded our marketing activities and saw our presence here at the fair as a good way of gaining new customers and renewing our appeal to our existing loyal customer base. And our concept has paid off. Our expectations were already clearly exceeded on the first two days of the fair. We held some extremely interesting discussions, especially with European trade visitors, particularly those from Germany, Russia and Spain, as well as with visitors from Saudi Arabia."

Hans U. Kohn, Chief Operation Officer, Schoeller Technologies AG, Switzerland, added, "We are satisfied beyond our expectations with our presence at Techtextil. We can be pleased with the great reception received from all the trade visitors. In the past few days, we have had the chance to welcome a host of Europeans and Americans to our stand and we noticed that our discussions were of an even higher quality than at previous events."

Maria Aleixo, Marketing Manager, Hänsel Textil GmbH: "We experienced three very intensive Techtextil days with an international trade audience. What was particularly noticeable was the wide user spectrum of our trade visitors from the car and furniture industries to the construction industry. Ten years ago, Hänsel Textil, famous for 100 years for fabrics, wovens, knitwear and non-wovens for clothing, ex-tended the scope of activities to the technical area. To achieve this, we bundled the know-how available within the Hänsel Group. These days the Group offers a unique product line in terms of functionality. At Techtextil, we presented our Group to the international trade world under the umbrella brand Hänsel, which really paid off. Here we have opened the way to new growth areas outside our core customer business."

The conference programme at Techtextil, with some 900 attendees, also recorded an increase in participation figures as against the previous event. At its two firmly established big hitters, the Techtextil and Avantex Symposiums, the trade fair presented a future-oriented over-view of trends and developments in the sector worldwide. As part of the Techtextil Symposium, Professor Heinrich Planck of the Institute for Textile and Process Technology in Denkendorf chaired the Med-tech section 'New Textiles in Medicine'. Professor Planck is very happy with the response at the symposium: "We had average audiences of up to 60 people at our lectures, which is significantly more than in previous years. In 2007, for example, the figure was around 25. This excellent result shows us that our topics addressed the interests and concerns of the target group at Techtextil," explains Professor Planck. Dr. Hartmut Strese, of VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik GmbH, Berlin, looks back to the Avantex symposium with an equal impression of success. Dr. Strese was responsible for chairing the lecture series on wearable technologies / e-textiles. "We were pleased to see a lot of interest at all nine lectures. The quality of the lectures was very high and the discussions following the formal sessions were very productive and informative", says Strese with some satisfaction.

The International Natural Fibres Congress was organised at Techtextil specifically for the UN Year of Natural Fibres: "This congress is one of the most significant for technological development worldwide. The use of natural fibres in technological and industrial areas is extremely innovative and the presentation at Techtextil here in Frankfurt is unique," said Brian Moir, Senior Economist Trade at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations at the opening of the congress.

Of all those who took part in the conference, 270 also attended the IWTO congress. For Günther Beier, President of the International Wool Textile Organisation (IWTO), Belgium, "the IWTO congress was very well attended. Our association had an outstandingly good opportunity to present itself and its main themes: in particular our collaboration with Australian Wool Innovations has a major contribution to make to our ability, with natural fibres, to promulgate considerations of sustainability and ecology more forcefully and effectively throughout the sector – in the automobile industry for instance." Pioneering product innovations were honoured on the Monday evening in a formal ceremony. Four Techtextil Innovation Awards and two Avantex Innovation Awards were presented in the tenth and fifth year of the awards, respectively. The prize-winners come from Ger-many and Belgium. The winning projects for the young talents' award in the tenth student competition "Textile Structures for New Buildings", which come from Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain and India, delighted the visitors in Hall 4.1 with some original and unusual ideas for applications in interior and exterior architecture.

The next Techtextil in Frankfurt am Main will take place from 24 to 26 May 2011. The leading international trade fair for technical textiles and nonwovens will then be accompanied for the first time by the new leading trade fair for textile and flexible materials processing, Texprocess (24 - 27 May 2011). The specialist event, Material Vision for materials in product development, design, and architecture which was held in parallel to Techtextil for the first time this year, will again be held at the same time as Techtextil.