At INDEX™26 in Geneva, André Imhof, CEO, AUTEFA Solutions Austria and Switzerland explains how AUTEFA Solutions is helping producers move beyond capacity expansion towards application-led manufacturing, AI-supported service, in-house recycling and stronger return on investment.
By Nithin Kumar
Key message from INDEX™26: Customers are no longer evaluating machinery only by installed capacity. They are looking for faster payback, stable quality, flexibility, lifecycle support and technologies that translate sustainability and digitalization into measurable operating value.
At INDEX™26 at Palexpo, the global nonwovens industry arrived with a familiar question: how should producers invest when markets remain cautious, operating costs are under pressure and customers expect both performance and sustainability? For AUTEFA Solutions, the answer was clear. Future competitiveness will depend not only on machinery, but on how efficiently, flexibly and reliably producers can operate their lines.
Speaking to The Textile Magazine at the show, André Imhof, CEO of AUTEFA Solutions Austria and Switzerland, said the response in Geneva had been encouraging, especially against the wider market backdrop. The company’s presence alongside its group partners from China also strengthened the visitor experience, allowing AUTEFA to present a broader technology platform and a wider range of solutions for today’s nonwovens producers.
For Imhof, the defining shift is not a single machine trend. It is a change in the way customers judge value. Producers are looking beyond installed capacity and focusing more closely on return on investment, production stability, energy efficiency, service responsiveness and long-term flexibility. Sustainability, recycling and circular economy concepts remain important, he said, but they must be commercially viable.
“Customers today look at business outcomes. They look for return on investment in three or four years. People still look for sustainability, recycling and circular economy solutions, but at the end it has to be economical.”
A full-line partner for an outcome-driven market
AUTEFA Solutions has long been recognised for turnkey nonwovens lines and machines across carded-crosslapped needlepunching, spunlace, thermobonding and related process technologies. Its capabilities extend from fibre opening and web forming through bonding, drying, finishing and complete line engineering. The company’s portfolio serves a wide application field, including hygiene, wipes, filtration media, geotextiles, automotive substrates, insulation, artificial leather, floor coverings, home textiles and other technical nonwoven products.
However, the conversation at INDEX made one point especially clear: customers are no longer looking only for a machine supplier. They want a partner who can help define applications, validate processes and support production after start-up. In an increasingly margin-sensitive market, this is where AUTEFA’s technical depth becomes strategically important. However, the conversation at INDEX made one point especially clear: customers are no longer looking only for a machine supplier. They want a partner who can help define applications, validate processes and support production after start-up.
A central pillar of this approach is the company’s Nonwovens Competence Center in Linz, Austria. The facility allows customers to test fibres, run trials, develop new materials and validate product concepts across multiple bonding technologies, including needling, thermobonding and hydroentanglement.
Imhof noted that more customers are not only visiting the lab lines, but also committing real development budgets to use them as product-creation platforms.
“They come with different kinds of fibres and different ideas, and we try to put these ideas into products. That outcome-oriented customer is something we support a lot.”
This is a significant advantage at a time when standard products are under pressure and differentiation is becoming essential. By helping customers move from an idea to a manufacturable product, AUTEFA strengthens its role as a long-term technology partner rather than simply an equipment supplier. For producers planning their next investment, that difference can determine whether a line simply adds capacity or creates a defensible market position.
AI-supported service: myAUTEFA & AUTEFA AI
One of the most important developments highlighted at INDEX™26 was myAUTEFA & AUTEFA AI, the company’s digital service environment. The platform combines machine documentation, AI-supported assistance, service knowledge and spare parts management in one central customer portal. Instead of relying on static manuals and scattered PDFs, customers can access relevant information faster and use the system to support maintenance, troubleshooting and workflow efficiency.
Imhof emphasised that the system is designed around the information provided by AUTEFA and the customer. This is crucial in industrial environments where data security, confidentiality and control over production knowledge are non-negotiable. The value of the platform is not limited to answering questions. It can evolve into a practical knowledge platform tailored to the customer’s own production environment.
Maintenance reports, production notes, drawings, troubleshooting records and machine documentation can all be integrated into a structured digital knowledge base. As the system is used, it becomes more useful. For producers facing skills shortages and high employee turnover, this has strategic value: know-how that once lived only in the heads of experienced operators and engineers can be captured, organised and made available to the next generation.
That point is particularly relevant for the textile and nonwovens industries. As experienced personnel retire and younger professionals move more frequently between jobs, retaining process knowledge has become one of the most serious operational challenges. Imhof believes the industry must respond not only with training, but with modern tools that make technical work more attractive, accessible and efficient.
“To keep the knowledge is becoming a major problem. It is more and more difficult to find skilled people. To attract young people, you have to give them new tools.”
In that sense, myAUTEFA & AUTEFA AI is positioned not merely as a service add-on, but as part of the customer’s long-term operating infrastructure. It supports continuity, reduces the risk of knowledge loss, accelerates service workflows and helps customers use both machine data and human expertise more effectively.
India, hygiene and the next wave of disciplined investment
When asked about growth areas in nonwovens, Imhof pointed to hygiene as a sector that has historically generated strong innovation and demand. The pandemic period created distortions, with large capacity additions followed by overcapacity and a cooling market. Today, however, AUTEFA sees signs of renewed movement, especially as producers look for new applications, higher efficiency and more localised supply chains.
India was a prominent part of that discussion. Imhof confirmed that AUTEFA had recently sold a complete ADL (acquisition distribution layer) line in India for diaper applications. For a country with rising domestic consumption, expanding technical textile ambitions and growing interest in local production, the development points to a wider opportunity: India is not only buying finished products, but increasingly investing in the machinery and know-how required to build its own competitive nonwovens manufacturing base.
His advice for emerging markets such as India was direct: differentiation is essential. In hygiene, transportation costs do not always provide a strong enough barrier because many materials can be shipped efficiently. Local producers therefore need to identify niches, tailor products to domestic and regional demand, and build process capabilities that make them more than price competitors.
The Indian opportunity also extends beyond hygiene. Imhof highlighted investment interest in recycling and technical textiles, supported by a stronger policy focus on domestic manufacturing and advanced textile applications. For AUTEFA, this aligns with the company’s global strategy of supporting customers who want to move from basic capacity expansion to application-driven, future-ready production.
Sustainability that strengthens the business case
Across INDEX™26, sustainability was a dominant theme. Imhof’s view, however, was deliberately practical. Circularity will scale only when it is economically workable. He separated the recycling opportunity into two distinct areas.
The first is large-scale textile waste collection and preparation. This includes collecting post-consumer or post-industrial waste, sorting it, cleaning it and removing components such as zippers, buttons and other contaminants before it can be processed. Such systems require logistics, infrastructure and specialised equipment, which means only a limited number of players can operate at significant scale.
The second, and currently more immediate, opportunity is internal recycling within the nonwovens producer’s own plant. Every manufacturer generates production waste: edge trim, off-spec material, start-up waste and process losses. AUTEFA is seeing growing demand for solutions that allow producers to reclaim production waste, reopen fibres and feed usable material back into the process.
This model is attractive because it connects sustainability directly to operating economics. Raw material costs are a major component of production cost in many nonwoven applications. When producers can reuse their own waste, they reduce disposal burdens, improve resource efficiency and recover value immediately. It is sustainability with a measurable payback – exactly the kind of proposition today’s market is prepared to support.
Built around service, lifecycle value and customer confidence
The broader message from AUTEFA Solutions at INDEX™26 was that the nonwovens machinery business is becoming more demanding and more sophisticated. Producers want high productivity, but they also need flexibility. They want sustainability, but not at the expense of competitiveness. They want automation and AI, but they also need training, documentation, spare parts, retrofits, energy optimisation, quality assurance and long-term service support.
This is where AUTEFA’s combination of engineering expertise, application know-how and long-term service support becomes especially valuable.
AUTEFA’s role goes beyond supplying equipment. The company supports customers from application development and trials through installation, production optimisation, upgrades and long-term service support.
For customers, that integrated approach matters. A nonwovens line is a long-term strategic investment. The true value of that investment is measured not on the day the machine is delivered, but over years of production – in uptime, consistent quality, raw material efficiency, energy performance, responsiveness to new applications and the ability to adapt as market needs change.
At INDEX™26, AUTEFA Solutions presented innovation not as a slogan, but as a practical route to better returns and more resilient operations. The company’s message was confident because it was grounded in the realities customers face every day: pressure on margins, shortage of skilled people, demand for sustainable solutions, and the need to justify every capital investment faster and more convincingly.
In that environment, AUTEFA focuses on what matters most to producers: reliable performance, flexibility and long-term efficiency. Whether through application development in Linz, AI-supported service through myAUTEFA & AUTEFA AI, internal recycling solutions, or complete turnkey nonwovens lines, the company is positioning itself as a partner for manufacturers who want more than capacity. They want confidence, competitiveness and a clear pathway to future growth.
That may be the most important takeaway from Geneva. The future of nonwovens manufacturing will belong to companies that can combine technology with application know-how, digital support and efficient production concepts. AUTEFA Solutions is making a strong case that it is built for exactly that future.