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Interview with Marco Crosta

Marco Crosta
Marco Crosta
Owner
Mario Crosta
Mario Crosta

Italian system is not helping small and medium enterprises
Founded in 1925, Italian company Mario Crosta is a worldwide leader in design and production of machinery and plants for dry finishing. Meeting various needs of the market, conceiving and designing new and up-dated technologies, Mario Crosta aims to be the landmark of excellence in textile finishing. Owner Marco Crosta talks about the increasing demand from far eastern countries, primarily Indonesia, Vietnam and Bangladesh.

What is the global market size for textile finishing machinery? What is the expected rate of growth by 2020?

Countries like China, Italy, Germany and Switzerland, which are the most active in machinery production, export finishing machines worth about €580-600 million every year. Analysts predict the global textile machinery market will grow at about 11-14 per cent by 2020.
 

Which are your major markets for knits, woven, wool, technical textile and home textile finishing machines? Which new places do you plan to explore?

As always, China, India and Turkey are the major textile markets, but lately we are seeing a general trend of increased demand from other Asian countries, such as Indonesia, Vietnam and Bangladesh.

What are your core competencies?

Our competency is a mix of tradition and newest technology application. We are recognised in the market for our high degree of heavy-duty machinery and the longevity and low maintenance of our machines.

For more than 93 years, we have been in the first line in the development of new technologies to be applied to our production machines. Everyday, our technical team is studying and updating our production with increased know-how and latest technology.
What are your core competencies?

Are all machines made in Italy and then exported? What is the USP of your products?

Yes, we produce all our machines in our two factories in Busto Arsizio, close to Milan. Our suppliers too are Italian and we don't buy a single piece from the international market. 

Our USP is maintaining top quality using latest technology, expertise and automation.

What are the latest technologies dominating textile finishing?

It depends on the sector and finishing per se is very vast.

What is the annual budget allocated towards research and development (R&D)? What milestones has the R&D team at your company achieved in the last five years?

We generally allocate 10 per cent of the annual budget to R&D, but this is not fixed. There is a variation in the fund on the priorities of the projects.

In the last few years, we developed a new type of shearing technology that allows our customers to get the same highest textile quality, running at an average speed double than before. Also, we have made several efforts in green technology, by helping our customers reduce their energy costs and allowing our machines to produce with less energy impact.
What is the annual budget allocated towards research and development (R&D)? What milestones has the R&D team at your company achieved in the last five years?

What are the major challenges that the Italian textile machinery manufacturers face?

Big difficulties come from our Italian system, which is not helping small and medium enterprises to be in the global market, at least at the same level as the competitor countries are in. 

We have always faced competition from countries such as China, India, Korea and Taiwan, which offer low-priced products to the market. Of course, quality is always in relation to the price, and in this case also, customers get what they pay for.

What kind of after-sales services do you offer?

Our after-sales service is very efficient and it is built on the global market system. Our headquarters in Italy manages and organises the requests from around the world to ensure a fast and efficient service. We have also developed a net of service offices worldwide to offer our customers fast solutions.

How sustainable are the machines you manufacture?

As explained earlier, we have developed some electronic systems that allow a huge reduction in energy impact and are used in all the machines of our production, supporting green technologies and the sustainable concept.

What has been your growth story? What is the target set for the next two years?

We are having an average year-on-year increase and in general, we have been witnessing a better market share since 2012. We aim to increase that by 20-30 per cent in the next two years.

What are your future plans?

Our future plans include developing our service network to offer faster and proper replies to customers, even in countries that are new but growing fast, developing technology for better and efficient output and investing in Industry 4.0. (RR)
Published on: 18/08/2018

DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.