At ITMA ASIA + CITME 2012 (12-16 June in Shanghai), Italian textile machinery manufacturers will place productive sustainability and efficiency at the centre of their production ranges. In fact, sustainability and energy efficiency are issues that, even in the textile industries of Asian countries such as China and India, will represent a discriminating factor in the near future in order to have a competitive advantage over international competitors.

Already during the last edition of ITMA ASIA two years ago, ACIMIT, the Association of Textile Machinery Manufacturers, had launched the “Sustainable technologies” project, later followed by the Acimit green label, a document which serves to identify textile machinery energy and environmental performance as to make them more easily comprehensible. In particular, the parameter selected to provide an ecological efficiency value of the machinery being labelled is the quantity of equivalent carbon dioxide emissions (Carbon Footprint - CFP) produced during operation of the machinery.

At ITMA ASIA 2012 the green label certification will be presented. In fact, in recent months ACIMIT has worked with an international certification body, RINA, defining the rules which would guarantee control of the values declared on the green label. The companies participating in this initiative are required to follow an implementation regulation and an operating instruction on measuring the energy/environmental performance parameters. Both the implementation regulation and the operating instruction on measurements were validated by RINA.

RINA does not intervene only in the definition of the rules, but also in monitoring their actual implementation: in fact, the regulation of this initiative requires about 20% of the companies participating in the project, selected at random, to be subjected to an inspection audit by the certifying body. They will have the task of verifying the measurement methods of the parameters and the operational conditions of the machinery which is labelled.

Of the 34 companies which participate in the project, 6 passed the RINA inspection audit this year in May: Flainox, Itema, Jaeggli, Reggiani, Santoni And Tonello.

“In the industrial machinery sector, explained Sandro Salmoiraghi, ACIMIT President, there are other brands which claim to attribute the sustainability license to those who wear their badge. In all actuality, continues Salmoiraghi, these are always brands which are self-referential and exclusively of a promotional nature. On the other hand, the ACIMIT president concludes, with the green label certification Italian companies are able to provide potential customers with performance information verified by an international certification body”.

In addition to the 34 companies which already participate in the ACIMIT “Sustainable technologies” project, other Italian exhibitors at ITMA ASIA are prepared to demonstrate the progress made by their technology concerning cost reduction and production resource savings to the visitors of the most important show in the sector in Asia.