Recovering from the impact of the pandemic, the global textile industry has demonstrated remarkable resilience, capturing the world’s attention with its strong presence at ITMA 2023 in Milan. This highly anticipated exhibition served as a comprehensive showcase of cutting-edge technologies, brought to life by an impressive gathering of 1,709 exhibitors.
 
ITMA 2023 attracted decision-making industry leaders and influential entrepreneurs who recognised the exhibition’s significance in shaping the textile industry’s future. With an overwhelming response, the exhibition was attended by a diverse and enthusiastic visitorship of over 111,000 from 143 countries. The top six visitor arrival countries are Italy (29%), followed by Turkey, India and Germany (6% each), France (4%) and Brazil (3%). 
 
Ernesto Maurer, President of CEMATEX says, “This edition has been a great success with the visitorship higher than the previous exhibition in 2019. At this ITMA, the transformation journey toward digitalisation and sustainability has taken a huge leap forward. It has been a mega gathering with the presence of stakeholders of the entire textile and garment making ecosystem. CEMATEX associations and their member companies, as well as all other exhibitors, are delighted with the results as the exhibition has surpassed all our expectations.”
 
Federico Pellegata, director of ACIMIT, notes, “The results of Milan edition confirmed ITMA as the most important showcase for world textile machinery industry. It was a great success, judging from the quality of visitors in attendance, and many Italian exhibitors have secured contracts and sold their machines.”
 
The 19th edition of the world’s largest textile and garment technology exhibition also drew the participation of several delegations and supporting organisation groups. Among many officials and government representatives, ITMA 2023 hosted high-level country delegations from two of the major textile producing countries, India and Uzbekistan.
 
The delegation from the 6th largest cotton producer in the world was led by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan, who declared his strong intentions to boost the textile industry in his country.
 
India was represented by Smt. Darshana Vikram Jardosh, Minister of State (Textiles and Railways) of India who led the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) business delegation. The delegation comprised 39 top Indian textile and apparel CEOs keened to seize new opportunities by riding on the digitalisation and sustainability wave.
 
Smt. Jardosh said: “ITMA 2023 was an excellent showcase of textile machinery. I am confident that interactions during the fair will further spur investments in the sector and help India achieve Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 5F vision of Farm to Fibre to Factory to Fashion to Foreign vision.”
 
ITMA 2023 also welcomed Ms Valentina Superti, Director, European Commission, DG GROW-Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs. She gave a presentation at the Impact Financing for Sustainable Transformation forum.
 
Thumbs Up
Exhibitors, ranging from start-ups to seasoned industry bellwethers at ITMA, gave the 2023 edition the thumbs up.
 
Arno Gärtner, CEO Karl Mayer Group says, “ITMA 2023 is once again the place to be for decision-makers and experts from all over the world. Our participation with the strategic topics of sustainability and digital process solutions provided answers to current customer challenges. We had an unbelievable number of intensive discussions with our international customers. We are glad that the enforcement of IPR regulation is taken seriously at ITMA. We had successfully taken action against a case of infringement of our patent rights during the exhibition.”
 
A first-time exhibitor at ITMA, Ms Ida Alnemo, Head of Application & Sustainability, TreeToTextile, said: “ITMA 2023 in Milan was our first participation in a large trade show, where we were offered the opportunity to participate in the Start-up Valley, a truly innovative environment which drew high attention amongst the visitors. We had an overwhelming positive response from all over the world, and from all parts of the value chain. ITMA has been a great platform for future collaboration needed to scale breakthrough innovations like ours, to make a positive change of the textile industry in offering better fibres to all.”
 
Summing up the positive response from participants, Dr Janpeter Horn, Chairman, VDMA Textile Machinery, said: “ITMA 2023 is one of the few international shows that did not suffer a drop in the number and quality of visitors after the pandemic. This speaks volumes about the brilliance of ITMA! The Milan exhibition has set the benchmark for ITMA 2027 in Hanover. We are eager and confident to continue ITMA’s success story 36 years after it has been hosted there.”
 
The next ITMA will be held at the Hannover Exhibition Center in September 2027.