Name: Alex Zucchi
President of the Association of Italian Textile Machinery Manufacturers (ACIMIT)
Alma Matter: Mechanical Engineering, University of California US
Alex Zucchi, 62, had a short stay with The Ethiopian Herald about
his 42 years of experience in textile machinery production and supply sector in
Africa, Europe and elsewhere.
He said: “I started my first job in South Africa. Currently, as the president of the AITMM, my association and I have a plan to augment the opportunity in Africa. We are particularly focused on bolstering the textile sector in Ethiopia through supplying advanced textile machineries. The future of our investment is the growing market in Africa.”
Furthermore, he said that Italian machineries are currently under 24 hours surveillance service. They are completely monitored from Italy in order to minimize breaking down risks, to keep business going and to protect the downing of machineries during the process of manufacturing. At least, this eliminates the aforementioned risk of break down along all the production chains.
This system indicates manufacturers in advance that a machine is facing a risk of breaking down. This helps so that a given production company will not stop production. This is the future of our machineries as well. They are more advanced.
The manufacturers in our association have their local maintenance, local engineers, direct employees and local store of spare parts in different countries of the world. In addition to that, we have direct employees in China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Turkey and Brazil and agents world over.
The other most important thing is that direct maintenance service during production process in any textile industry particularly in developing countries like Ethiopia is very much important. Let us assume if a production machine is down, at least 15 days are needed to bring spare parts from Italy. It is the company that is saddled with the employees’ salary, tax and other expenses. Thus, maintenance service is important to avoid all these risks and to keep production uninterrupted. However, we are working to drastically avoid the risk of production break down in advance.
Considering the market itself in Ethiopia, what Italian companies see is just little as compared to the high potentials in the continent and in Ethiopia as well. We believe that we are in the warming up exercise. And the fact is that Italy is still the first exporter of textile machineries in Africa. The better feelings, mentality of Ethiopians and Africans as well towards Italy will also augment high market in textile machinery in Ethiopia and in the continent.
Furthermore, Ethiopia is a young country over 70 percent of whose population comprises youths. And this young people are active workforces. They specially want to put on outfits boasting different and unique designs. Automatically, the country is destined to grow up. It has also a growing GDP. The Association is ready to supply its products to the growing market of Ethiopia. Facts about Italy’s Machinery production
Italy is one of the undisputed world leaders in textile machinery industry. It displays a leadership it shares with few other countries. Our sector is a leader in numbers of 300 manufacturers employing 12,000 people, producing machinery for net worth of 2.5 billion euros, fully 85 percent of which is exported to over 100 countries. But Italy is above all a leader in quality creativity and reliability of its advanced technology solutions offered to textile manufacturers worldwide.
The key to the success of Italy’s textile machinery industry has always been tradition and innovation. The success is also attributable to a centuries-old tradition that has allowed our country to standout in the workmanship of textile materials, acquire and develop the necessary skills and expertise overtime to express a global leadership, based on creativity, quality and innovation solutions.
Tradition and innovation are common features characterizing the various stages of the “Made in Italy” textile supply chain, covering all processes upstream and downstream in the production cycle, starting from our own textile machinery sector. In synergy with historical customers, located in the countries’ geographical areas with a strong textile vocation, Italian manufacturers have established their reputation when it comes to quality, reliability and versatility of their technology, now recognized the world over, as evidenced by the presence of Italian machinery in all countries with a textile manufacturing industry.
In the Italian pavilion recently at the International Textile Machinery and Engineering Exhibition (ITME) Africa 2020 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, ACIMIT has brought the leading Italian textile machinery companies in order to give an insight into the innovation technology that distinguishes the “Made in Italy” machinery.
The Ethiopian Herald Sunday edition March 1/2020
BY HAFTU GEBREZGABIHER
