Itma Milano 2023

Itma is the world’s travelling trade fair for the mechanotextile industry, which attracts the leading manufacturers of textile/fashion technology and machinery every four years. The 2023 edition, the 19th since its inception in 1951, was held in Milan at the Rho exhibition centre and recorded impressive numbers: 1,709 exhibitors covering 220,000 square metres, 12 pavilions, 20 product sectors represented covering the entire textile-clothing value chain and over 111,000 visitors from 143 countries.

In this panorama, Italian companies have shown great liveliness and a very high level technological proposal, with a massive presence of more than 400,000 exhibitors, equal to 30% of the total, and ranking first among the exhibiting countries at Itma.

Sustainability and digitisation were at the heart of the technological solutions presented at the fair by Italian companies. The demand from customers is, in fact, for sustainable products and production processes where digital transformation enables more effective and efficient production. And in this scenario, the Italian manufacturers intend to contribute to redesigning the future of the textile supply chain, focusing on these two directions, as evidenced by the claim that characterises the entire promotion of Italian participation in ITMA Milan, Shaping the future.

Among the many promotional initiatives, the photographic exhibition promoted by ACIMIT dedicated to the Italian textile machinery “The heritage and uninterrupted evolution of the Italian Textile Machinery Industry” was particularly interesting. The photographic itinerary, set up inside the CASA ITALIA Lounge in the Service Centre of Fiera Milano Rho during the days of the fair, allowed visitors to discover the Italian textile machinery industry, told through archive images of technologies, production sites and entrepreneurs who have made history in the sector. “This is,” comments ACIMIT president Alex Zucchi, “an evocative journey that recounts the evolution of our industry from the last century to the present day, through corporate, photographic and video evidence, to reconstruct the memory, values and technological evolution of a sector that excels at international level”.