Smart Solutions Holding, the parent company of Sympatex Technologies, has started a long-term production partnership to help feed the growing market for sustainable functional fabrics.
The company announced Thursday that Munich-based Kufner Group, a leading producer of interlining and technical textiles, had acquired fabric finisher Ploucquet and its production site in Zittau, a German city near the borders of Poland and the Czech Republic.
Smart Solutions said the sale will strengthen the competitiveness of Ploucquet by bringing 124 new jobs to the Zittau facility in the long run. The company also noted that the lamination and finishing of Sympatex fabrics will be carried out by the Kufner Group at the acquired site.
“It has been our target to find a perfect partner for Ploucquet in order to secure the efficient production site Zittau in Central Europe, which is important to us, and to offer the employees in Upper Lusatia a solid perspective for the further development there. Kufner meets all of our demands in an almost ideal way,” Michael Kamm, managing director of Sympatex, explained. “We have complementary products that can be perfectly combined with each other in the segment of fashion textiles as well as technical textiles.”
“We share the same values, we have the same goals and serve identical markets,” Ulrich Sogl, managing director of the Kufner Group, added. “Moreover, Kufner is very well positioned on the international market. With our international distribution structure, we will strengthen the Ploucquet brand and use the capacity of the production site in Zittau even more.”
According to Smart Solutions, the sale is a “decisive strategic requirement” for the future of Sympatex. “With the additional resources that we gain…we will keep developing the internationalization within our three main business areas of footwear, apparel as well as contract and workwear,” Kamm said. “Thus, we can increase the chances of reaching our turnover and profit targets.”
Ploucquet has been a textile treatment provider since 1806, offering finishing, coating and lamination technologies for fabrics, knits and nonwovens. Kufner, founded in 1862 as a cotton factory for the clothing industry, own four facilities on two continents today and has more than 20 distribution companies worldwide. Sympatex has supplied technical textiles to the likes of Timberland, Jacadi, Camel and Hugo Boss, among others, since 1986.