The company recently inaugurated its new technology centre in Coimbatore and The Textile Magazine had the opportunity to interact with CEO Dr. Uwe Rondé
Creating ripples in the market is nothing new for the Saurer Group, considered one of the industry leaders in textile machinery globally. With 170 years of experience behind it, Saurer’s booth at ITMA Milan 2013 is expected to be once again the cynosure of all eyes at the mega textile trade fair. We caught up with the company’s CEO Dr. Uwe Rondé who was in Coimbatore recently for inaugurating a new technology centre for a brief chat, during which he touched upon various subjects, including the company’s presence in India, its preparations for the ITMA 2023 event, some of the group’s latest technology initiatives and plans.
Dr. Rondé was pleased that the travel restrictions of the pandemic seem to be a thing of the past now. “I had come to India during ITME 2022 where I had met a lot of customers. Most of them invited me to visit their mills and here I am. In the month of May 2023, I have met 12 customers in a matter of five days, which is quite a tight schedule. But it feels good that after a hiatus we are now able to meet our customers personally and get their feedback on our machines. I felt warmly welcomed wherever I have gone in India,” he said.
India Presence
Elaborating on the group’s strong footprint in India, he mentioned: “Yes, we have a strong presence in India. We have around 700 employees here. We have a widespread sales and service setup here. We have a brand-new technology centre in Coimbatore, which helps us to serve the Indian customers with technology research, come out with new yarns and much more. India is the second-biggest market for textiles and accordingly we have to be very present here, which is a key part of our strategy.”
Display at ITMA 2023
The group is looking forward to participating in ITMA Milan 2023. “We are very much looking forward to this exhibition because after not having had exhibitions during the pandemic we would like to show our customers our newest developments. We are displaying our rotor- spinning machines ‘Autocoro 11’ and ‘BD 8’ along with latest technology in air-spinning machines ‘Autoairo’. We are showing our carding and pre-spinning equipment and also showcasing some ideas in automation. Last but not the least, we are showing our full product line related to ring spinning,” Dr. Rondé elaborated.
“Talking about all our products, we are not looking to invent anything new. Our intention all the time is to move towards better energy efficiency and achieve improved stability and improved productivity. We call this our ‘down to earth’ strategy. Customers are for sure interested in new technologies, but they are even more interested in getting improved productivity, reduction in energy consumption, more ability in terms of recycling yarns, and so on. This is what we are following – a very down to earth strategy and not big promises. The Saurer name – we are a 170 years’ old company – promises high quality and high and long-term productivity. All our products have been fulfilling these promises,” he further said.
Recycling Technology Thrust
One of the hot topics in textiles in recent times is recycling, which is also likely to be the buzz word at ITMA 2023. So, how is Saurer working on the recycling technology and circular economy? Responding to this question, Dr. Rondé said, “From our point of view the base of whatever we are selling is the base of very deep knowhow of the technology. I mean to use recycled fibres and produce optimum-quality yarn and our investments over the years have been to understand the processes to make this possible. Based on the outcomes, we have made some fine tunings on our machines. For example, in our rotor-spinning machine Autocoro 11 we are offering a special recycling package called ‘Recycling Xtreme’ where we have integrated several features to allow the customer even to work with shorter fibres, recycling fibres and to guarantee a good yarn. Recycling is one of the hot topics today in the textile industry and we think we are ready to offer attractive solutions.”
Communication the Key
In the previous ITMA automation and digitisation were the prime topics of discussion. Particularly in the post-pandemic times there has been a lot more demand for automation given issues such as shortage of labour. Going into details on how Saurer is supporting its customers in this particular area, Dr. Rondé said, “With respect to automation and digitisation, if you ask three customers you are going to get three different answers. There is lot of misunderstanding prevailing with regard to digitisation. For us digitisation means, first of all, communication. A machine must be able to communicate with a user and communicate with the next machine.”
“Maybe the machine should be able to communicate with the machine builder and tell him that in two weeks’ time I will need such and such a spare part. So it’s all about communication and that is the reason our focus in terms of digitisation is connectivity. You can also call it IoT capability. We do not want to follow this high-flying dream of digitisation. We would like to have a down to earth strategy and the strategy is to let the machines communicate. Believe me, we are far away from that and for the moment we are all working on how to make the machines communicate with each other. Once that is done, we will take the next step,” he added.
An Honest Strategy
There have been some important restructuring decisions taken at the Saurer Group in the recent past. The group reportedly had to sell off a few of its business units. Given this churn and the increase in competition, Dr. Rondé highlighted a few points about what Saurer is today and what would it be tomorrow and where it scores over the competition. “Yes, agreed we had to take some decisions due to several economic reasons but the most important topic is that Saurer is celebrating its 170th birthday given that we started our activities in 1853. My target is that maybe in another 170 years we would still be talking about Saurer. We are a stable company and will remain so.”
“We are strongly convinced that the success of our machines is based on technology know-how. You can copy a lot of things from several machines but you cannot copy things that are in the heads of the people who have been working 20-30 years for a company like Saurer and this is where we are an honest, down to earth and technology-driven company. We are guaranteeing machines and you can be sure that they will be of the same matchless quality 20 years from now. We are not looking at being ‘Cheap Charlie’. We want to be in the same position in the textile industry as Mercedes Benz is in the automotive sector.”