Picanol, a technological market leader in airjet and rapier weaving machines, has given a live demonstration of the new rapier machine OptiMax-i at the company’s open house event that took place from 8-11 September in Ypres.

This open house also saw Picanol providing a sneak preview of its new TerryMax-i rapier weaving machine for terry cloth. Almost 300 visitors from more than 25 different countries attended the event.

The new rapier machines will be making their international debuts at the ITMA Milan trade fair for textile machinery that is set to be held in November, where Picanol will be presenting its new technologies.

New benchmark

"It has been a pleasure to be able to demonstrate over the past few days our new rapier technologies to our many European customers. Following the strong interest of our customers in our new rapier offerings, we decided to organize a pre-launch event in anticipation of ITMA Milano. With the new OptiMax-i we have set a new benchmark in the rapier industry because this is the fastest industrial rapier weaving machine in the world,” explained Johan Verstraete, VP Sales, Marketing & Services at Picanol.

“Thanks to its innovative design, the OptiMax-i is also the most versatile and user-friendly rapier machine with the lowest energy consumption on the market! It can be adapted to a wide range of fabrics, which means that it provides weavers with a great deal of flexibility in reacting to changes in market requirements.”

Weaving machinery

Another highlight of the Open House at Picanol was the sneak preview of the TerryMax-i, a new machine for weaving terry fabrics that is for the first time available in a rapier format.

Picanol weaving machines are a synthesis of technological know-how and experience that has been built up over almost 80 years. This has resulted in more than 350,000 machines being produced. Picanol currently has more than 175,000 weaving machines running in some 2,600 weaving mills worldwide.

Growing together

In line with its new marketing campaign Let’s grow together, in which Picanol uses visuals of children during their different stages of growing up in life, a group of children of some of the Picanol employees had the honour of collectively unveiling the new OptiMax-i rapier machine.

“At Picanol, we live up to the slogan Let’s grow together as we are convinced that we can help our customers to grow. We’ve done it in the past and we are very determined to continue to do so in the future. We offer a wide variety of machines and services that enable weavers to create every type of fabric imaginable. As growing is the essence of doing business, this is why we endeavor to make our machines more energy-efficient, more versatile, user-friendly and easy to set.”

www.picanol.be