Interview with Giulio Bonazzi

Giulio Bonazzi
President & CEO
Aquafil- Gruppo Bonazzi

70% of our total sales volumes in 2009 was achieved in Europe

It was the year 1956, Carlo Bonazzi , together with his wife Silvana began production in the clothing industry in Verona, with five workers and five sewing machines, investing five million lira of his own capital in the operation; the company was then to become Aquarama. So came to being today’s giant corporate house -The GRUPPO BONAZZI, a family owned group headquartered in Verona-Italy with manufacturing facilities in Western and Central Europe, as well as in North America. The Gruppo Bonazzi operates with two divisions: AQUAFABRIC - natural and synthetic fabrics AQUAFIL - synthetic fibers and polymers. The AQUAFIL division represents approximately 65% of the Group turnover (counting about 2500 employees) and is structured in four BUSINESS UNITS namely CAPROLACTAM AND CHEMICALS supplying raw materials to other Business Units; AQUAFIL BCF YARNS supplying Yarns mainly to the Carpet industry; AQUAFIL DIVISIONE BULGARI FILATI supplying Yarns to the Textile industry; AQUAFIL TECHNOPOLYMERS fully dedicated to the Engineering plastics business. Giulio Bonazzi is the President & CEO, Aquafil- Gruppo Bonazzi. In a one to one with Face2Face team, Giulio Bonazzi provides insights to the current behaviour of world market of synthetic fibres.

Sir please tell us, how is world market of manmade fibres behaving these days?

Manmade fibers consumption is generally increasing in the daily life due to the combination of easy care, high performances, durability and the affordable price the MMF goods have in the poor countries.

So, who all are potential client countries for your line of operations? Whom do you regard established markets?

Asia Pacific and China represent the biggest growth potential for Aquafil operations: in order to offer those marketplaces the proper service and products, we have already invested (and still are investing) considerable resources in those areas (operations in Thailand since July 2007; operations in China starting Q2/2010). EU and US are well established markets.

Industry that you deal in has huge competition, locally and internationally too. What makes Aquafil stand leader and grab a chunk of business share?

Excellent service, great flexibility, tailor-made products for individual customers, reasonable pricing and strong commitment to innovation. In short: close partnership with our customers.

AQUAFIL is a European leader in fibres for carpeted floors. We request you to throw some light on on-goings in this carpet industry; its market size – your share, current trends and movements in global context?

The European production of tufted carpets for textile floor covering accounts approx 500 million square metres, out of which approx 230 million are made of nylon BCF- the type of yarn which Aquafil produces. With a market share of over 35% we are definitely the European market leaders in this industry. Seventy percent of our total sales volumes 2009 was achieved in Europe, which is still now our most important market, although total consumption is rather shrinking than expanding. The challenge for the next future is to consolidate our presence in Europe and possibly expand our market share here through the introduction of innovative new products, but at the same time to exploit the growth potential of the overseas markets (USA, Asia Pacific, China) for a real volume expansion.

We are traditionally focused on valuable yarns of high technological and stylish content which we sell to the contract market (55% of our total sales = corporate, office building, education, healthcare), the top-end residential market (26%) and the automotive industry (16%).

Is R&D division at Aquafil preparing itself to capture nascent and lucrative industry of non-conventional textiles (technical textiles)?

Yes, our R&D division is a real mainstay in our organization and we are consistently committed to significant investments in this sector, in terms of both financial and human resources to the purpose of investigating new opportunities and engineering new products.

Please also tell us about adherence to environmental concern policies at Aquafil.

As explained in our Sustainability report, Aquafil has established a very serious and strong sustainability policy on the following environmental themes: CO2 emissions, wastes, water and energy. Since 2007 we started to collect data about the a.m. issues and we decided how to proceed to improve our engagement toward sustainability. To better follow our daily engagements in 2008 we established a new business unit, named Energy& Recycling, with the following mission:

To promote the use of law impact or renewable energies

To promote the recycle

To divulge the culture of sustainability inside and outside the Group.

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Published on: 22/03/2010

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.