Recently renamed to Zimmer America Corporation was founded in 1985 by Roland J P Zimmer, its majority shareholder and CEO. Before that it was the wholly owned subsidiary of Zimmer Austria called Johannes Zimmer Service and Sales on the same location since 1970. The company served as a branch office in the USA for Zimmer Austria. After 1985 manufacturers representations were added to compliment the production program of Zimmer and to better serve the American customers with a full product range centered on the printing machine business of Zimmer. The next expansion was the USA based production of spare parts and complete machines for the textile industry. A 30,000 sq ft manufacturing facility was built in 1999. Zimmer America’s own product lines were added in the 1990 and include JIGMATIC Jig Dyeing Machines, atmospheric and high temperature, and ESCH Textile Flocking Systems for roll to roll flocking on textile and other substrates came on board in 2005. Today, Zimmer America has expanded the business far beyond supplying, installing and servicing textile machinery. The new business groups include: RECYCLING TECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONS, from textile fibers to PET bottle to bottle recycling, and SOLAR POWER Systems, from residential domestic hot water to commercial and industrial solar thermal installations to photovoltaic solar electricity for homes and businesses. Mr Roland JP Zimmer, CEO of Zimmer America, was born in Austria in 1956. He did his degree in mechanical engineering from Austria and joined Zimmer Austria in 1975. Since 1985 he has been appointed as CEO of Zimmer. In a one to one with Face2Face team, Mr Roland Zimmer paints word picture of present textile machinery market across the globe
Zimmer America is a system provider for Textile, Non Woven, Carpet, Recycling Technology, Solar Power, and US-Market Entry Consulting. Amongst these multi areas, how do you see your Group placed in textile and allied verticals?
Zimmer America remains committed to our roots of being a full service textile machinery supplier for the USA and Canadian market as we have been since 1985. The same is true for the proprietary carpet digital printing process CHROMOJET, produced by ZIMMER AUSTRIA and marketed through ZIMMER AMERICA for both North American markets.
Non Woven was started two years ago and ZIMMER AMERICA is fortunate to represent the finest Italian Non Woven machinery makers BEMATIC GROUP (BEMATIC, TEXNOLOGY, TECTEX) as well as BOMBI Mecanica for thermo bonding ovens, colanders and terminal non woven equipment.
Recycling machinery and complete plant set ups for waste recycling was added in 2010 and put ZIMMER AMERICA amongst the top suppliers for that industry in the North American market.
Solar Thermal and Photovoltaic technology from our Austrian partner company KIOTO clear energy confirms the new trends in America for renewable energy and is of equal interest for ZIMMER’s current textile customers as it is for the market in general.
As we all know, machinery was the sector that has faced the brunt of financial havoc, the most. Has the situation improved now?
Capital investment is still suffering worldwide and especially in North America, even though some signs of recovery became visible at the end of last year and beginning of 2010. By positioning ZIMMER AMERICA into total customer system solutions rather than just offering machinery, ZIMMER has positioned itself to further growth and in fact has been growing all through 2009 and continuous to do so in 2010.
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.
