The globalization of the textile industry was reflected at the recently held ITMA 2007 event in Munich, Germany. The 15th International Exhibition of Textile Machinery, which took place September 13-20, attracted 118,000 trade visitors from 149 countries to the New Munich Trade Fair Centre. Nearly half, 45%, of visitors came to the event for the first time. Event organizer Messe München International said that never before have visitors from so many different countries attended ITMA.

In total 1,451 companies from 38 countries presented the latest developments and technical innovations for the entire textile chain to visitors and competitors, in a display covering 102,000 square meters of exhibition space. This breadth and depth was highly valued overall by the participants—67% of trade visitors and almost 65% of exhibitors gave ITMA 2007 significantly higher marks this time than at previous events.

“ITMA is the leading trade fair for textile machinery manufacturers,” commented Heinrich Trützschler, managing director of Trützschler GmbH & Co. KG Textilmaschinenfabrik and chairman of the ITMA Committee. “We have found that at this fair visitor quality is superb from all over the world. And we get to talk to some top people here, whom you rarely get to see. It all went extremely smoothly.”

More than 95,000 trade visitors countries outside of Germany came to the event. This represents more than 80% of the total number of visitors. After Germany, the other countries represented (in order of number of visitors) were: Italy, India, Turkey, Brazil, France, Switzerland, Spain, Iran and Belgium. Interest from Central and South America was particularly strong; for example, more than 4500 trade visitors came from Brazil; more than 2000 from Argentina and more than 1500 from Mexico. In total ITMA 2007 attracted around 12,000 visitors from Central and South America.