Interview with Mrs Regina Bruckner

Interesting was certainly the beginning of Bruckner: a former Famatex customer asked my father, who had left Famatex, if he can build him a tailor made machine for finishing bank notes. My father at that time had just a small engineering company and no manufacturing – but they both closed the deal – and this was the beginning of our factory and still is a key to our success: we are building tailor-made machines for individual uses, for finishing any kind of textile-like fabrics.

For me personally very remarkable was the start as Managing Director in 1999 – after changes in the long-term management my husband and I were taking over, with only little experience after our studies but with a lot of ideas, the will to succeed and the help of our very dedicated staff.

Well, it is known that textile industry is a very, very wide field: it ranges from simple T-Shirts to highly complicated 3-dimensional technical textiles to glassfibres and nonwovens, which are used in so different industries like medicine, building, decorating, filtering, etc. At Brückner we are able to give our customers always the best solution concerning technical layout, energy efficiency and productivity.

The industry is divided by two big trends: one is concentrating on the price of the end-product, the other big trend is functionalization of the end-product. And concerning our experiences these two trends can be seen in all fields: whether it is apparel textiles/clothing or technical textiles. On one side you only follow the cheapest offer or you expect more of a textile, then a jacket, a shirt or a filter have additional values added.

Therefore our aim is the best possible consultation for our customer so that he gets the best ideas on how is investment in a new machine or finishing line will pay off. We are not concentrating in only selling a simple, standard machine – we are offering solutions and ideas!

In our view there is also a trend towards ecological and sustainable produced products. Consumers are more and more aware of these things: that´s why for example the demand of organic cotton is growing, even at stores like Zara or H&M. If consumers will continue asking for these products than they also want to be sure that the finishing of these goods was made as energy efficient, safe and cleans as possible. With our machines our customers can prove this!

There are many regions in the world that still put a lot of effort in textile industry. Mainly they are situated in Asia for apparels. For technical textiles those markets are mainly situated in Europe but some products have to be produced in the country where they are used as transportation would be too expensive. We see a growing market for technical textiles in general, but this field is very wide and you need years of experience and very good technologists to be able to be successful in it.

As nearly every branch, also the branch for industrial fabrics is suffering from the economical situation. But anyhow we believe in our technology and in our competence and we are convinced that we are strong enough to handle this situation and to step out strengthened from the actual crisis. We may not say that we see a recovery yet, but we feel the demands and needs from the customers’ side. There is still a big potential in the field of technical applications and it is continuously increasing.

Starting from our daily routines in the office to the manufacturing - ending in the use of our machines: we try to make our staff aware of the possibilities to save energy, material and of course costs too! We invested in the past a lot in renovation of our offices and our work floor to reduce energy costs, but what we are investing now, during the crisis is money and work force for developing the next machine generation that will reduce the use of energy tremendously.

You’re welcome.