Giuseppe Zigrino, Managing Director of K+Z Corporation Ltd. interview with Bangladesh's Textile Today

Kidd+Zigrino (K+Z) Corporation Ltd. was established in Great Britain in 1972. The company over the past 46 years, has developed various machinery for creating solutions for textile printing, dyeing, and finishing, with products ranging from color paste preparation equipment, rotary screens preparation equipment, garment printing tables, steam agers/polymerizers, and the many other various types of ancillary equipment.

Recently Giuseppe Zigrino, Managing Director of K+Z Corporation Ltd. gave an interview with Textile Today where he explores many insights of the company along with many other aspects. Here is the glimpse of the discussion for the readers.

Textile Today: Could you please share us briefly about KZ technology and its contribution to the textile and apparel industry?

Giuseppe Zigrino: Kidd+Zigrino (K+Z) Corporation Ltd. was originally established in Great Britain in 1972, whereby due to the 1970’s worldwide growth of textile production and with the increasing demand for new developments in textile machinery, some of the international textile machinery manufacturers were under great pressure to service their machines, and sometimes make necessary corrections/alterations to the operating systems of their new developments.

The Kidd+Zigrino company was thus initiated to offer their services as a consultant engineering company, contracting their staff services to the established manufactures of machinery used for the processing of textile fabrics and carpets.

The gradual expansion of the Kidd+Zigrino company in the late 1970’s, led the company into the natural manufacturing of their own textile machinery/equipment developments.

During1980’s and 90’s with both Thailand and Indonesia gradually becoming the leading manufacturers of textiles in South East Asia, led the Kidd+Zigrino company into opening a branch in Thailand (K+Z Corporation Ltd.), where the engineers from Kidd+Zigrino, were to design the print plants and supply the machinery and equipment, including giving support to these companies in all their related technical issues.

Textile Today: How do you see the apparel value chain and recent changes?

Throughout human history, textiles and garments have naturally taken on the role of the very first importance in the human presence. Mankind’s evolvement from the original use of wearing slain animal’s skin’s, to today’s highly decorative textiles with changeable designs is considered as a continuous transformation through up gradation of technology and human taste. Following the 19th century political and social changes, which drastically affected many types of industries that were not able to adapt to the changes. Many textile manufacturers began to realize that traditional textile production methods had become out of date to meet the actual demand, whereby various developments of machinery with high productivity began to be introduced for producing cotton fiber into yarn and then woven into fabric followed by dyeing, printing and finishing. During this period, textile-finishing products began to be in high demand, and the chemical industry was also reported to have developed different kind of synthetic dyes and chemicals. The early 1950’s, with the initiation of textile machinery exhibitions, the textile manufacturing companies began to take note in the many new type of developments which were being created by the different – European engineering companies for improving the methods used for the production of textiles, and especially with the initial introduction of Knitted Fabrics.

Giuseppe Zigrino: What is the trend in printing right now?

In the past decade, the flat and rotary screen-printing machinery have actually become much more competitive with the introduction of improvements to these type of printing machineries.

The introduction of the ink jet printing process applicable for carpets in the 1970’s, which thereafter began to be applied for the printing of fabrics. Although the original ink jet printing process was more suitable for the printing of carpets, or for fabrics with high pile, it did initiate the innovations into today’s digital printing machines. The number of companies now manufacturing digital printing machines certainly does keep rising, and the future of these digital printing machines will actually be dependent if they are used for the correct application. The original purpose of the digital printing machines were to transfer the system of printing “paper posters” to PVC, and/or PVC coated fabrics. However, the main advantages of these digital printing machines to print natural textile fabrics are as follows:

a) They do not require any type of screens
b) On average, a Design can be prepared ready for printing within 3 to 4 days
c) They can print any size of repeats, with exceptionally high definition

Textile Today: Cost reduction is a great challenge for Bangladesh apparel industry, how K+Z technology can help in this?

Giuseppe Zigrino: Fast fashion is putting a lot of pressure on textiles and garment manufacturers to quickly produce a product in a cost-efficient manner. Retailers update their collection constantly to attract more buyers for their products. Yet, the textile and clothing industry is labour intensive while the labour cost in Bangladesh keeps on rising. To overcome the situation the Bangladesh apparel industries are required to improve production methods with modern technology in order to survive in to-days very competitive textile garment market. K+Z products offer simple-to-use but innovative technology that is able to boost the operator experience and make operation more productive and safe.  In addition, our technology enables the minimization of production cost through helping reduce manual labour and ensure reliability and quality.

Textile Today: What kinds of manufacturing facility do you provide?

Giuseppe Zigrino: Kidd+Zigrino has developed various machinery for creating solutions for textile printing, dyeing and finishing, with products ranging from color paste preparation equipment, rotary screens preparation equipment, garment printing tables, steam agers/polymerizes, in addition to the various types of ancillary equipment to improve the operation of printing textiles fabrics and carpets

Textile Today: As 46 years K+Z business, tell us about Bangladesh market?

Giuseppe Zigrino: The expansion of the Bangladesh textile manufacturing market is expected to continue in the late 2020, whereby the K+Z Corporation will keep assisting the Bangladesh Companies as they have done for the past 20 years, in arranging the necessary design layouts of the print plants,including the supply of their machinery/equipment as they have done for various number of companies in Bangladesh, to companies like M/s Apex Printing and Dyeing, M/s Consumer Knittex, M/s DBL, M/s Robintex, M/s Aswad Composite Mills, M/s Square Fashion, M/s Devine Fabrics, M/s Crony and far too many other printing companies to mention herein.

Reference:

https://www.textiletoday.com.bd/bangladesh-apparel-industries-required-improve-production-methods-modern-technology/