The French Textile Machinery Manufacturers' Association, UCMTF, once again brought together the students from the four French universities which train engineers for the textile industries. The goal was to further enhance relations with the students and to review the careers offered to them both in France and worldwide.

The forum was organized on the campus of l’ENSISA (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Ingénieurs Sud Alsace) located in Mulhouse. Students from ENSAIT (Roubaix), ITECH (Lyon) and the textile department of HEI (Lille) joined. More than 250 manufacturers, teachers and students participated.

Despite the economic crisis, the French manufacturers' dynamism is obvious. To get even stronger when investments will recover, they are increasing their R&D and marketing budgets. The thirty companies which make up UCMTF achieve a turnover of nearly € 1 billion, ranking sixth in the world. They employ directly or indirectly more than 8,000 people and over 90% of their sales are exported to more than a hundred countries all over the world.

Presenting these figures, Bruno Ameline, chairman of UCMTF, emphasized that the textile machinery market is still dominated by the European manufacturers for historical reasons of course, but mainly thanks to their commitment to answer their customers’ needs, to provide machinery for developing new products and/or for optimizing the production processes.

After the welcome speech of Bruno Ameline, Marc Brabant, the president of UCMTF’s education commission and Gérard Binder, the CEO of ENSISA, Gildas Minvielle of IFM (Institut Français de la Mode / French Fashion Institute) analyzed the state of the textile industry and the main trends which are shaping its future. He explained how the textile industry was one of the first industrial sectors to face the globalization process and how it adapted itself to this new environment. The students expressed their realism about the challenges and their hopes for new products, particularly in the industrial fabrics sector.

Three panel discussions were an opportunity for the UCMTF members to present their strategies and their new machines:

• Combing- Spinning- Yarn processing-Weaving: Participating companies: N. Schlumberger, RITM, Petit, Superba, Stäubli.
• Nonwovens: Participating companies: Asselin-Thibeau, Laroche, Rieter Perfojet.
• Finishing and air engineering: Participating companies: Alliance, Roussselet, Dollfus & Muller, AESA.

Later, Claude Levy-Rueff introduced a study made with the machinery manufacturers which shows the importance of the return on investment in the customers’ decisions, the costs savings in energy consumption being particularly important.

He also reported on the SECURIVET conference which took place last June in Paris. It showed that the protective garment sector is still a growing industry which offers multiple careers opportunities to textile engineers.

This introduced a round table on today’s and tomorrow’s job opportunities for textile engineers. Five alumni of different ages, presented their own careers, the know how and the inter-personal skills required for one’s own success.