For the first time at ITMA 2003 in Birmingham, CEMATEX, as owner of ITMA, invited manufacturers of dyestuffs and chemical products for textiles to present their products and new developments. Thirty manufacturers already took advantage of this chance in Birmingham. The number of exhibitors in this segment will increase in Munich at ITMA 2007; 38 exhibitors have registered till now.

As a result, visitors to ITMA 2007 can not only obtain an overview of the latest developments in dyestuffs and textile auxiliaries in Munich, but can also see demonstrations of the close interrelationships of machines, processes and products for actual practice with new developments for high process reliability and shortening of process times.

In the textile industry, functional finish from fibre manufacturing to textile finishing and clothing production is especially in the forefront today. This applies to the increasingly varied and demanding sports and leisurewear as well as to expansive, technical textiles.

Improved textile qualities such as higher use properties, for example, improved fastnesses, are the main goal in the use of new auxiliary materials for textiles in textile finishing. This should be done with the lowest production costs possible.

A few examples illustrate this: functional sport and leisurewear using temperature-buffering “Phase Change Materials” (PCM), improved UV protection, nanotechnology for easy-care textile surfaces, odour-absorbers for household textiles, use of environmentally compatible auxiliary materials for textiles, flame-retardant finishing, antimicrobial finishing and simplified textile care (washing instead of dry cleaning).
Due to the increasing demands on clothing, home textiles and technical textiles, manufacturers of dyes and auxiliary materials for textiles must also work on new developments continually.

Chemical manufacturers are increasingly promoting improved product properties with their own labels to make consumers of textiles more aware of the quality (for example, ITMA 2007 exhibitor DyStar with “Evo Gard”, “High IQ” from Huntsman Textile Effects and “Bionic Finish” from Rudolf Chemie). In the meantime, 7000 textile manufactures already use the Eco-Tex Standard 100 for textiles tested for harmful substances with more than 55,000 certificates for millions of individual products worldwide.

ITMA 2007 is providing a unique chance in Munich for the manufacturers of dyes and textile auxiliaries to present new product and technology developments for manufacturing customised textile products to a global trade public from spinning, nonwovens manufacturing, weaving and knitting all the way to clothing production.

The visitors from the textile finishing industry are especially extremely significant, because they are important buyers of textile chemicals with their numerous pre- and post-processing production stages.

The manufacturers of dyes and textile auxiliaries will be in Hall B1 at ITMA 2007, directly adjacent to the textile washing, bleaching, dyeing, printing, drying and finishing machine manufacturers.

The European umbrella organisation CEMATEX, which comprises nine European member associations, is the owner of ITMA and has selected the Textile Machinery Association of the VDMA to engage Messe München to hold the event in 2007.