Mayer & Cie. | Circular knitting expert

For more than 110 years, Mayer & Cie. (MCT) has manufactured circular knitting machines that are used to make t-shirts, night wear, underwear and mattress covers, among others. The capital goods manufacturer from the Swabian Jura has received many patents and revolutionised the automated circular knitting process, and is now the global market leader in the field. Well over 95 percent of its machines are exported: mainly to Asia, starting with Turkey via India and Bangladesh to the very eastern countries like Indonesia and China; but also to other textile countries in America, Europe and Africa. In 2015, group sales were around 100 million Euro, more than 10 percent higher than in the previous year.

The latest innovation from Mayer is the spinitsystems, a technology that combines spinning, cleaning and knitting in the same machine for the first time.

Batliboi
Batliboi Group of Companies is primarily in the engineering industry and covers areas of textile machinery, textile air engineering, machine tools, environmental engineering, wind energy, motors, international marketing and logistics. It has two foreign subsidiary companies ´ Quickmill Inc, Canada which manufactures Machine Tools and AESA S.A., France which is in the business of Air Engineering. AESA has subsidiaries in China, Singapore and India.

Details about innovations
Mayer & Cie.´s headquarters in Albstadt is also the home of the research and development department. Mayer & Cie. invests around five per cent of its annual sales revenue in R&D ´ an aboveaverage proportion for the industry. Its R&D targets are correspondingly ambitious. Mayer & Cie.´s latest innovation is spinitsystems. It combines in an intelligent way what were previously separate processes in textile manufacturing. The technology combines the three process stages spinning, cleaning and knitting. Rewinding ´ a step that was previously necessary ´ is no longer required. On this machine single jersey knitwear is manufactured not from yarn but from roving straight from the spinning mill. The machine produces a very unique type of knitwear. This process provides the users with a whole array of advantages, including lower overall capital investment in machinery, less space and significantly lower production costs.

Also new to Mayer´s portfolio are Relanit 3.2 HS and Relanit 3.2 R. The former is a high speed single jersey machine for fool proof and reliable elastomeric high speed plating. The Relanit 3.2 R takes striping to production quantities which have been known so far only from unicolor standard single jersey fabric ´ without making amends when it comes to flexibility. Cost savings and less wastage can be achieved with our needle oil recycling system SENSOBlueRS.

Machines presented at ITME
Mayer & Cie. will present two machines at ITME. Firstly, there will be the OVJA 1.6 EM HS with a diameter of 38´ knitting gauges up to E20. The second machine on show will be a high performance interlock (HPI) machine. The D4-2.2 II´s forte is its peak productivity.

A third major topic at ITME will be Mayer & Cie.´s technology spinitsystems. ITME will mark the sales launch of Mayer & Cie.´s Spinit 3.0 E ´ the first machine type equipped with this technology ´ in India. First machines are about to be delivered to Indian customers. Yet, not only for prospective clients ITME will be a good opportunity to learn more about spinitsystems which combines in an intelligent way what were previously separate processes in textile manufacturing. The technology brings together the three process stages spinning, cleaning and knitting. Rewinding´ a step that was previously necessary ´ is no longer required. On this machine single jersey knitwear is manufactured not from yarn but from roving straight from the spinning mill. The machine produces a very unique type of knitwear.

Performance Post-Milano
Order books at Mayer & Cie. (MCT) are extremely well filled until the end of the year. Order entry in mid-Q2 2016 is the highest in decades. ´Looking at our order entry since 1 January 2016, the current level is one that we last reached in the boom years at the end of the 1990s,´ says Wolfgang Müller, Sales Director at Mayer & Cie. At the turn of the millennium the knitting machine manufacture was shipping around 2,000 machines a year. By the end of this year 1,500 machines are likely to have left the Mayer works.

To account for the outstanding demand situation at Mayer & Cie. Sales Director Müller looks first at last year´s ITMA. ´There is,´ he says, ´a definite trend toward high quality machines. It runs across the entire market ´ from Bangladesh to the United States.