Textile and clothing


People make more than clothes

You can’t tell from the anti glare membrane on the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai or the roof of the Olympic Stadium in Berlin that the material comes from Krefeld, from the long-established Verseidag, the traditional Vereinigten Seidenwebereien AG founded in 1920. But it no longer has anything in common with the former cotton and silk textiles; rather, it is a fully engineered technical product, capable of being custom-designed according to its purpose and useable in temperatures between minus 60 and plus 250 degrees. That’s why Verseidag also supplied indutex to Mecca, the city of tents, when it was looking for non-combustible tarpaulins following a devastating fire.

Achter & Ebels (Aunde) in Mönchengladbach is still weaving, yet the textiles company has long since made the transition from “small supplier of materials to system manufacturer”: car manufacturers no longer merely receive the material for the seat covers; they get the complete seats, ready to be inserted into place. And not just in Germany, but in 22 countries where the company has 83 plants.

These are two examples of the successful transition of textiles companies keeping up to speed with the latest developments and producing just in time, and which fulfill the criteria of Rolf. A. Königs, the Chairman of the Association of the Rhineland Textile Industry: product flexibility and mobility of production. The Lower Rhine region is host to a good many of these companies operating successfully on the market.

Although there’s only a handful of weaving mills for tie material these days, 80 percent of the ties sold in Germany are managed, designed and sold from Krefeld. That includes Ascot ties, which people say are the standard by which other manufacturers should measure themselves. That’s probably why they name a ‘tie man of the year’ in Krefeld.

Despite the fact that the Lower Rhine no longer manufactures shirts and trousers, in Mönchengladbach they decide which materials are cut and sowed, how, and in which colors – at the upmarket van Laack as well as at Gardeur, Alberto, Zerres, Cinque and Michèle. The creativity remains in the Lower Rhine, the handiwork is purchased from abroad at good value for money and with quality control.

That’s why Krefeld, once called the “Lyon of Germany”, and which used to call itself the velvet and silk city, hosts the biggest street fashion show in the world. And Mönchengladbach is catching up since little now remains of Rhineland’s answer to Manchester in the cotton era. That applies in another sense too: around 1,800 young people are trained in textiles and clothing technology in Mönchengladbach. This faculty of the Lower Rhine University is the largest in Europe, and hence also enjoys a good reputation among foreign students: about 360 come from 57 nations. In 32 laboratories 26 specialists teach and carry out research on everything from fibers to ready-to-wear clothes, technical textiles and house-and-home textiles.

There is therefore no shortage of qualified engineers, designers and traders, well-trained in theory and practice, in the Lower Rhine region. Something also appreciated by the many companies from the textile machinery sector, also very well represented in the Lower Rhine region. The textiles and clothing industry also draws support from the research conducted locally at the German Textiles Research Center North-West (DTNW) and at the wfk-Cleaning Technology Research Institute. Thus all the activities are interconnected, helping to keep the Lower Rhine textiles industry in tune with the latest developments and market trends.

Initiatives

teXellence – Kompetenznetz Textiler Niederrhein: The aim is to set up a textiles think tank where companies work on solutions for the future textiles industry together with the Lower Rhine University and the textiles research institutes. The network can also serve to generate new business fields and contacts and to develop shared marketing activities.

ZiTex – Zukunftsinitiative NRW: Employers associations in the textiles industry and the trade union wish to improve the general economic conditions of the companies, their employees and the research institutes, and enhance their efficiency and competitiveness.

In good company

Contact

Bertram Gaiser
Geschäftsführer
Standort Niederrhein GmbH
02131 / 92 68 592
gaiser@standort-niederrhein.de

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