Interview with Mr Michele Gabarra / Senior Sale Manager at Biancalani Srl
By: Behnam Ghasemi / Kohan Textile Journal
How do you evaluate ITM exhibition in general?
In general, we can consider ITM Istanbul 2022 as the first international textile machinery exhibition after the last ITMA. In the pandemic, everything was stopped and now it is a big occasion for textile activists to participate in a significant textile exhibition after 4 years.
As a matter of fact, I suppose ITM is a really important exhibition and especially at ITM 2022 the percentage of international visitors is much more than the last ITM and we met many visitors from all MEA region and even Ukraine and Russia, almost all of our agents in the world visited us during the ITM 2022, it is a big success and also there is a good feeling that you can see people happy and without the mask and enjoy the business atmosphere in the show.
we are again back to a normal situation and can shake hands with real customers. We are quite satisfied with the exhibition.
Research and development are an integral part of BIANCALANI Machinery. let us know more about it.
We are developing always new technologies, new treatments and processes and … We invest in R and D forever.
One of our main innovations and products here is open with washing machine Aquaria, with the latest modifications and improvements. On this machine, we reach a high level of efficiency and productivity in our washing process.
Also in Airo 24 with Airo washing and softening principle, improved mechanical actions and is really suitable for any type of fabric treatment, with very low water consumption and low energy consumption, and the response that we receive from the market about this machine is really good and satisfying.
What do you think about potential of the textile industry in the Middle East and Africa region?
The Middle East and Africa have too much potential and it is not for tomorrow, it is for today. During the exhibition, we finalized some projects in Africa and it is not in the leader textile countries in Africa like Tunisia or Egypt, but really in the heart of Africa.
That means there are huge potential and important investments. In many African regions there is some good match between domestic consumption, international transportation, skilled and cheap labour, raw materials and … in North Africa already we have good partners and customers and our networks are growing in the region.
If we consider Turkey in the MENA region it is a significant market alone. Even in some countries like Iran that have economic and political problems, there are many companies that want to invest and renovate machines and production lines and even their development and projects are ready to start.
I see a successful future in the MENA and African region textile market, CIS countries like Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and … are growing a lot, recently Uzbekistan government is trying to increase the cost of yarn export to favour the fabric production locally and it can be a game-changing idea in near future.
The point is that the Middle East and Africa are neighbours of Europe so business actions and movements can be faster and more reliable.
How do you evaluate current situation of the textile machinery manufacturers in terms of production costs?
The current situation of the world and military operations cause increasing prices and shortage of raw materials for machinery manufacturers and even energy prices are at least 3 times more than before.
As a textile machinery manufacturer company, we try to absorb a part of this increase and don’t reflect it to our customers totally, there are many problems also in the supply chain from USA or China but we try our best to buy our needs in bulk and keep our supply chain normal with huge investments. Because our customer and market trust Biancalani Machinery we can do these investments.
What is Biancalani’s Sustainability policy?
Environmental protection is not just an integral part of the company’s ethics, but also of its business model. Some of our technologies like the Airo24 softening machine can guarantee green production because we offer to fabric producers to desire softness with mostly mechanical processes instead of chemical they can reduce the usage of softener and auxiliaries and it reduces the production cost and also less harmful substances for nature and respect to the environment.
So there is a win-win situation and there is no reason we don’t do that, and in many of our products, this is an important fact, in our washing branch machines like Aquaria the main point is water and our technology has focused on efficient washing process with very low water consumption.
