ITMA 2023 Ends on a High Note with Strong Industry Participation

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 more than 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%).

“This edition has been a great success with the visitorship higher than the previous exhibition in 2019,” said Ernesto Maurer, president of CEMATEX. “At this ITMA, the transformation journey toward digitalization 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.”

“The results of Milan edition confirmed ITMA as the most important showcase for world textile machinery industry,” Federico Pellegata, director of ACIMIT, noted. “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 organization 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 sixth-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 digitalization and sustainability wave.

“ITMA 2023 was an excellent showcase of textile machinery,” Jardosh said. “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 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.

Exhibitors, ranging from start-ups to seasoned industry bellwethers at ITMA, gave the 2023 edition the thumbs up.

“2023 is once again the place to be for decision-makers and experts from all over the world,” said Arno Gärtner, CEO Karl Mayer Group. “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.”

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 from Sept. 16-22, 2027.

ITMAconnect, the world’s largest digital listing of textile and garment technology manufacturers, was launched to complement this year’s ITMA exhibition. Non ITMA 2023 visitors are now be able to access the platform to source and network with international technology owners and manufacturers who took part in the Milan exhibition. To register, please click on this link: https://www.itma.com/dashboard/visitor/login.