COMPANY HIGHLIGHTS ON DISPLAY AT ITMA Asia + CITME 2018
Lamiflex – an Itema Group Company
In Hall 3 – Booth E9, Lamiflex representatives will be on hand to demonstrate the most comprehensive portfolio of original flexible rapier tapes, sprocket wheels and other accessories on the market. Lamiflex invented the first flexible rapier tape in the market and is now an undisputed technological leader when it comes to advanced composite materials design and manufacture of best-in-class tapes and accessories for weaving, as well as a broad range of other industries. First result of synergies between Itema and Lamiflex is the brand-new TLC triple-layer carbon tape featured on the R95002denim.
In addition to the core business of weaving machines, Itema is diversifying into the industrial segment and is now the majority owner of Lamiflex, leading supplier of high-performance technical composite products and accessories to the textile machinery industry, and not only. This strategic partnership with Lamiflex enables Itema to leverage the consolidated know-how and over 40-year expertise in carbon fiber and other composite materials markets and to work together with Lamiflex on constantly improving the lifetime and performance of the best-in-class rapier tapes, sprocket wheels and other key components of our weaving machines.
From Inventor to Market Leader
If Lamiflex is now a leading manufacturer of composite materials, this is thanks to a visionary business idea in 1976 that led the company to design and produce a brand-new type of flexible rapier tape for rapier weaving machines. The first nylon tapes easily melted at high speeds. Lamiflex designed a new composite cotton and phenolic-resin tape that could cope with higher loom speeds – this invention changed the textile machinery industry for ever.
Composite rapier tapes are, in fact, the historical Lamiflex product that has always been at the center of research and company innovation. It is known and appreciated throughout the world and is still today the jewel in the crown of a company that is not only the inventor, but also the undisputed technological and market leader for this type of product. For more than forty years and despite the growing diversification into other sectors, rapier tapes and their continuous improvement remain in the heart and mind of everyone who works in Lamiflex, now even more so, thanks to renewed enthusiasm and closer-than-ever collaboration with Itema.
A product that has changed the history and the world of textile manufacturing
Weaving mills worldwide increasingly choose rapier weft insertion technology for the unparalleled versatility and fabric quality unbeatable among other technologies when producing the full range of woven textiles, from apparel, to luxurious home textiles, and highly complex technical applications and weaves, to name just a few. Wherever there is a rapier weaving machine, there is a need for one of its most strategically important components – the flexible rapier tapes. Lamiflex’ continuous R&D and 40-year expertise in advanced materials and composite solutions is instrumental in ensuring that Lamiflex tapes are, and remain, the absolute benchmark and best-in-class when it comes to the highest performance in the market, capable to develop alongside, and anticipate even, the breakthrough developments in the highly competitive textile machinery industry.
In the sector of textile machinery industry, Lamiflex has also invented other important accessory products like sprocket wheels (gear wheels for moving the rapier tapes). Lamiflex is, to this day, the main supplier of rapier tapes and accessory products to the top, most prominent OEMs of advanced rapier weaving machines.
Business Diversification
In addition to weaving accessories, Lamiflex is broadening its market reach into a number of other sectors where light-weight, high-performance advanced composite materials are key, such as aeronautics, medical, and a large number of industrial applications, from packaging to flexo printing, to paper mills, water desalination systems, and many others. Lamiflex is able to offer tailor-made, real-time service for its customers, thanks to a number of advanced technologies – Solvent Impregnation, Filament Winding, Pultrusion & Pullwinding, Wrapping, Progressive & Multi-Chamber Presses, Autoclaves, Resin Transfer Moulding and Low Pressure Moulding Compound – and lean production processes.
Itema and Lamiflex: a partnership to develop innovative solutions
Since the 2017 merger with Itema, the two companies work together in great synergy, combining and sharing know-how on an open co-engineering platform with the ultimate goal to develop the best weaving components and dynamic loom accessories, including the Number 1 Tape and Number 1 Sprocket Wheel on the market today: high performance, hi-tech rapier tapes and sprocket wheels for a wide range of weaving machines. This is a partnership of two market leaders working closely, looking for synergies across the organizations, and especially in R&D, sharing expertise, collaborating openly, enabling the cross-fertilization of ideas, and real-time prototyping and testing.
Lamiflex is already the exclusive supplier of rapier tapes and sprocket wheels for the best-selling Itema Rapier R9500 loom series. The very first result of synergies between Itema and Lamiflex is the successful joint development of the brand-new, high-performance TLC triple-layer carbon rapier tape created for the breakthrough R95002denim presented at ITMA ASIA 2018. Watch this space for further developments from the Lamiflex-Itema collaboration.
www.lamiflex.it