Interview with Eric Scholler

We see a good growth potential for Indian technical textiles in automotive, geotextiles and to some extent artificial leather. For reasons of sustainability, research of natural fibres could be increased.

By far, China is the biggest market today. But India seems likely to grow, due to its own market potential. Other Asian countries are growing due to manufacturing relocations, for example Japan and Korea.

We had significant growth in India until 2012, and expect growth again for 2015 and the following years.

It's confidential, but it is a significant amount.

This depends on division and product sector. Groz-Beckert produces in Europe (Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Czech Republic), Asia (China, India, Vietnam) and America (USA).

The automotive sector is very innovative - with both decorative and functional textiles. Big reserves are in geotextile applications, where high value textiles save costs and improve durability of roads, river banks and landfills. Higher demands on environmental protection will boost the filtration segment.

Less material consumption and increasing expectations in performance and optics.

For the division - nonwovens, we have leading trade fairs like ITMA Europe this year in Italy, Techtextil in Germany, IDEA in the USA and ITMA Asia in China. Our goal at these leading trade fairs is to showcase our new developments and to demonstrate our capability to serve customers from all fields of textiles.

From the service point of view, a worldwide net of affiliated companies and sales representatives in almost all countries; and from the product side, high availability, best possible process stability, continuously new developments and an unreached product portfolio for all kinds of applications, definitely distinguish Groz-Beckert from our competitors.

Sustainability is one of the top topics of our industry. Technical textiles replace heavier solid material, and offer new perspectives of durability and comfort by the reduced use of raw material at the same time. Natural fibres are gaining more and more importance as they are fully recyclable, and still offer long-term performance in many fields.