Monforts, the German textile finishing machinery supplier with more than six decades in India, is positioning advanced finishing, coating and dyeing technology as the country's next major investment frontier — and its next battleground for competitiveness.

Daniel Rütten, Area Sales Manager – Asia at Monforts, is taking over responsibility for India and the wider region from Hans Wroblowski. In an interview with The Textile Magazine, he laid out where the supplier sees the demand shifting: continued orders for conventional woven and knitted apparel and home-textile applications, alongside expanding demand in technical textiles, activewear, sportswear, filtration and automotive fabrics.

The investment calculation is changing, according to Rütten. Indian mills are scrutinising energy, water and chemical consumption, automation levels and quality consistency. "Productivity remains essential, but increasingly has to be combined with lower operating costs, greater flexibility and the ability to manufacture more sophisticated products," he said.

The technology case

Monforts' core products for the market are Montex stenters and Thermex dyeing and curing systems, with thousands of installations worldwide. The engineering focus sits on drying, which Rütten identifies as one of the most energy-intensive stages of textile finishing because of the water that must be evaporated from fabric.

The Eco Applicator addresses this by applying finishing chemicals with a minimum amount of liquor instead of saturating the fabric, cutting the water load entering the dryer and delivering savings in water, chemicals and energy.

MontexCoat extends the minimal-application logic into coating and functional finishing. The fully automatic line offers knife coating, magnet roller coating, rotary screen printing and other techniques on a single line, targeting manufacturers who need to switch between products and formulations. For producers focused primarily on knife coating, Monforts has introduced the lower-cost coaTTex line, now also available with a table for special coating technology for activewear — a tiered offer spanning entry-level specialist coaters and established flexible producers.

Monforts has also entered a cooperation with BW Converting and installed a Baldwin TexCoat G4 digital spray unit at its Advanced Technology Center in Mönchengladbach, Germany.

Service economics and the installed base

Monforts' India business runs through its long-standing partnership with A.T.E. Enterprises, which has local business units in all of India's major textile regions. A.T.E.'s role extends beyond initial customer contacts into planning, logistics, engineering and aftersales service.

That support model matters commercially because Monforts equipment has a long working life. Many Monforts machines remain in production for several decades, and stenters running for more than thirty years are common, Rütten noted. The company increasingly retrofits existing installations with new controls, drives and monitoring systems — projects that go well beyond spare-parts replacement and can extend the performance and useful life of an existing line. With India's very large installed machinery base, modernisation is a distinct revenue stream alongside new-machine sales.

Compliance pressure as a demand driver

Rütten framed sustainability as a commercial requirement rather than a discretionary add-on, particularly for manufacturers supplying international brands and export markets. His formulation effectively treats energy, water and chemical reduction as compliance-linked operating-cost items that buyers increasingly audit.

Energy remains the major constraint. Stenters require large amounts of thermal energy, and direct electrification is not practical for every mill or location. Monforts has already carried out work on adapting its heating technology to green hydrogen as a substitute for natural gas in drying and heat treatment — a potential cooperation area with India's developing renewable energy and green hydrogen sectors.

On trade policy, Rütten said the India–EU FTA has the potential to strengthen an already important relationship between Indian manufacturers and European machinery suppliers. Any reduction in tariffs and administrative barriers improves installation economics, though he stressed that total operating cost over several decades of production — not the initial purchase price — is the correct investment metric.

ITME 2026 and the outlook

At India ITME 2026, Monforts' core message is that finishing has become the stage where manufacturers can most effectively differentiate. Basic fabric production is increasingly commoditised; appearance, handle, functionality and value are created downstream.

Indian processors face simultaneous demands: higher quality, lower energy consumption, greater flexibility and shorter production runs. Rütten expects considerable interest in coating and minimal application technologies as manufacturers move into specialised products.

"The opportunity is not simply to produce more fabric, but to extract greater value from every metre produced," he said. Over the next decade, volume alone will not define competitiveness; the winners will combine competitive costs, consistent quality, resource efficiency and market responsiveness.

For sourcing directors and mill owners, the proposition to weigh is clear: capital allocation is shifting from greige capacity toward finishing and coating capability, and the payback case increasingly depends on energy and water reduction plus retrofit economics rather than throughput alone.