Oerlikon Barmag secured an above-average number of industrial yarns projects in 2016, and once again confirmed the general trend within the context of ITMA Asia + CITME last October.
The new systems that will be commissioned over this year are primarily focused on the Asian region. However, manufacturing industrial yarns is also interesting for producers in Europe due to the comparably higher margins and specialized areas of application.
Oliver Lemke, Regional Sales Director at Oerlikon Barmag, says, “We are experiencing huge demand for industrial yarn systems. Customers are asking for products that offer an interesting margin, such as specialties and industrial yarns.”
Stefan Becker, Senior Expert Research and Development, adds, “What has, for example, been very well received by our customers is that our current machine concepts for industrial fine-titer nylon yarns allow us to offer configurations that are specifically tailored to the product requirements of the end application of these yarns, such as tents, tarpaulins and parachutes. Here, the focus of the machine design is both on the product quality of the yarns in typical titer ranges between 20 and 70 denier and on production efficiency, and, above all, on the optimization of conversion costs.”
The vast majority of the additional output of polyester and nylon yarns will be deployed in the automotive sector (airbags, safety belts, tire cords, etc.). A further application area focuses on the broad spectrum of geotextiles and products for textile construction. And the continuing trend towards polyester yarns as a substitute for nylon – prevalent among many product categories such as airbags – is being confirmed by these projects. This is above all due to the constantly improving properties of polyester with simultaneously considerably lower raw material costs. Despite all this, the market for industrial yarns continues to diversify and develop very much in line with the specific end applications. Here, the rising demand for so-called high-performance tires is resulting in both increased demand for PET HMLS yarns and in the greater output of nylon 66 yarns for use in cap ply.
Oerlikon Barmag offers flexible and product quality-oriented machine concepts that efficiently cover these requirements with excellent conversion costs for all product categories.