“India is a country but for all practical purposes it is like a continent. The market holds a lot of promise for Reggiani because of the sheer size,” said Michele Riva, sales and marketing director, EFI Reggiani during a conversation with Indian Printer & Publisher on the sidelines of EFI Connect 2016 in Las Vegas. Just before Riva sat down for the exclusive chat he delivered a very interesting keynote address on textile printing titled ‘Opportunitiesin Digital Textile Printing: From Analog to Digital.
In July last year, EFI acquired Bergamo, an Italy-based inkjet textile printing technology provider Reggiani.In its more than six-decade long history, Reggiani has become a leading innovator of a full range of industrial solutions for textile manufacturing, including highquality printers for fashion and home furnishing textiles, with a comprehensive portfolio spanning the company’s original rotary screen technologies to the most advanced inkjet textile printers and inks in the industry.
In India, Reggiani currently has 40 machines installed with Sahiba Group and D’décor being its major customers. Sahiba Group has 10 machinesinstalled while D’décor employs four of its machines.
“In India there is a huge growth opportunity in home décor and soft signage markets. With double-digit growth seen in the Indian eCommerce segment, home décor in particular has great potential,” Riva said. “The market for textile printing is evolving in India as well. Earlier we used to get majority of customers for plotters but now we are meeting with many people who are interested in industrial printers too.”
As for future plans in India, Riva said, the company intends to use its distributors more effectively to drive sales. Moreover, plans are afoot to participate in some important shows and exhibitions in India this year and next year in order to expose the brand further to the Indian market.
Moving towards digital
In his keynote address, Riva said that the textile printing market, currently dominated overwhelmingly by analogue printing methods, is rapidly moving towards digital. He stated that digital is expected to gradually grab close to 15% share of the textile printing market. According to Riva, the latest data show that out of 50 billion metres of fabric printed annually worldwide, analogue rotary has a share of close to 70% while analogue flatbed has a share of 10%. Digital has a share of mere 5% at the moment.
“Over the next 10 years, growth in digital textile printing will be huge and its market share in the textile printing industry will go up from the current 5% to 15%,” Riva said. Talking further about the future, Riva pointed out that apart from areas like clothing and traditional fashion, digital printing will be driven by new growth segments such as soft signage, sports clothing and interior decoration. In the fashion segment, the emergence and growing popularity of fast fashion brandssuch as Zara, Mango and H&M will be a great boon for digital textile printing technologies. For these fast fashion brands, it is very important to bring the latest designs and products in the showrooms very quickly. “From prototyping a design to getting that in the showroom takes just three weeksfor these fast fashion brands. This is possible only because of digital printing systems. Therefore, this is a very vital niche for digital textile printing.”Another very important growth driver for digital printing in the next decade would be the demand for a green production process.
