Fabric of life Benninger Group

FABRIC OF LIFE

As a leading machinery partner to the global textile industry, Benninger Group delivers both high-end equipment to its customers and a total service solution. Emma-Jane Batey spoke to the sales director, Josef Kleinheinz, to find out more.

Swiss-based machine supplier to the global textile industry Benninger Group has been serving this established yet ever-changing sector for more than 150 years. Over this time, the company has built up a reputation for delivering high quality machines that support its customers’ commercial aims.

Divided into three core business areas, Benninger offers textile finishing machines for woven and knitted fabrics, machines for the tyre cord industry and automation solutions for both its own and third-party machines. All the required bleaching, dyeing and finishing can be conducted on Benninger machines.

The sales director Josef Kleinheinz, told Industry Europe ho,w these three core business areas have developed over time to ensure that Benninger is providing its customers with the best possible technical equipment and service. All Benninger machines are tailor made for the customers’ exact demands, using a modular system of parts that can be adapted and customised as required. He said, “Over our long history we have gradually built our offer to clearly reflect the changing needs of our customers. We have certainly had plenty of time to get to know what they want! By carefully listening to our customers we have seen our offer change in tune with the market needs, but always while drawing on our exceptionally strong history and knowhow in the worldwide textile machine sector.”

Complete solutions

The Benninger core business is its activities in the textile finishing sector. Dedicated to supplying its machines and complete solutions to leaders in the field, the company’s products are both expensive and state-of-the-art. Mr Kleinheinz added, “They are expensive for a reason – they are the best available machines that enable our customers to deliver the best possible service to their customers. We supply to vertically integrated mills as well as dye houses and finishing companies worldwide. These can be in different fabric segments such as cottons like shirting or bed linens, or more technical applications such as washing and de-oiling fabrics. Other high-tech applications include a number of automotive air bag manufacturers and companies producing fabrics for filtration and screening.”

For the tyre cord industry, Benninger supplies direct to multi-national brands including Dunlop and Pirelli, as well as certain cabling and other heat setting and treatment applications. As various threads can also be used in Benninger machines in addition to fabrics, the customer base is as broad as the applications.

The Benninger automation division represents its “biggest chunk of turnover”. Providing all the required controls, drives, programming and software necessary for its machines, the division employs some of the most technically experienced members of the workforce. Growing rapidly thanks to the clever introduc-

tion of automation for third-party machines, Mr Kleinheinz explained how customers can come to Benninger without really knowing what automation solution they need and come away with a complete solution. He said, “We work out how to transpose the client’s problem into a solution. They can just say ‘we need something but we don’t know what or how’ and we work it out. We do this on a contract basis and it’s a very rewarding part of our service.”

Benninger is also active in the knit line segment, where knitted fabrics are finished. Its machines offer a great customer advantage in this field as they cut production costs by between 10 and 15 per cent.

Worldwide opportunities

With production sites in Switzerland and Germany and subsidiaries in both India and China, Benninger is not currently planning to expand, however it is open-minded to new manufacturing opportunities that would benefit the company and its customers. Its main geographical markets are currently India, China, Brazil, central Europe, Turkey, Pakistan and South East Asia. While the company has a worldwide customer base and is able to supply all its products and services on a global basis, it is seeing particularly strong growth in emerging markets.

Benninger’s strong global client base for its customers sees it defines them as ‘A, B

or C’ customers in order to guarantee that it is addressing the very particular needs of its target audience. By Benninger’s definition, an ‘A’ customer is one which supplies to a certain level of customer itself. An example of an ‘A’ customer would be one which exports internationally to certain quality-focused brands and chains. A ‘B’ customer is active in its domestic market yet still highly focused on quality products and practices. A ‘C’ customer can also be a large-scale manufacturer but one which tends to be led only by low-cost decisions.

In accordance with this ‘A, B or C’ definition, Benninger has recently identified the need to utilise its R&D capabilities to produce machines that retain the high standard it is known for whilst opening up the possibility of working with ‘B’ customers. Mr Kleinheinz said, “We are not interested in working with ‘C’ customers as our machines are essentially over-engineered for their purposes. But we do want to appeal to ‘B’ customers as they appreciate high quality textile machines. However, we know we must address the cost issue in this market, but we want to do this without losing the high quality reputation we have worked hard to establish, or indeed to lose our valuable ‘A’ customers.”

In order to address this, Benninger is working on machine concepts with a lower break even price to appeal to the ‘upper B customers’ while still meeting all the needs of its ‘A’ customers. Mr Kleinheinz concluded, “This is where we see the most exciting growth and it’s global. Benninger is a great brand, so as long as we stay true to our high quality machinery experience and know-how yet deliver a new machinery solution, that is more cost-attractive to all our customers. We are selling a process as well as a product, so by delivering our customised solutions to both ‘A’ and ‘B’ customers, we are growing while still keeping true to our reputation for quality.” n