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Erich Weiss, Chief Executive Officer of Cavitec/Nonwoven, part of Santex, describes how the Group has evolved and put the many years of experience of its companies to good use in building machinery for the technical and nonwovens sectors.

Today, the main members of the Santex Group are Santex AG in Tobel, Switzerland, and SperottoRimar SpA in Malo, Italy. Santex AG is only around 20 years old and started as a small workshop operation in Tobel. From the very beginning, machines for powder scattering and coating have been part of its portfolio. However, the company soon widened its activities to include dryers for knitted goods and, later, wet finishing of the same.

The experience in drying and oven technology facilitated Santex's entry into applications for nonwovens, namely thermobonding, coating, drying and heat setting. Some eight years ago, the well-known Swiss companies Caratsch and Villars, both in the technical textile machinery sector, were acquired and combined with the corresponding Santex activities under the name Cavitec AG.

Most recently, at the beginning of 2004, the activities of Cavitec AG and Santex Nonwoven were taken into Santex AG, forming the business unit Cavitec/Nonwoven, in addition to the business unit Santex for knitted goods finishing.

The machinery programme of Cavitec/Nonwoven, which is covered here, is sub-divided in three main sectors:

* coating/laminating;

* nonwoven;

* prepreg/wet coating.

Coating/laminating

Cavitec/Nonwoven offers the four major coating technologies for hot-melt:

* rotogravure (Cavimelt);

* rotary screen (Caviscreen);

* multi-roll (Caviroll);

* slot die (Cavislot).

To date, Cavitec has supplied more than 80 hot-melt laminating machines.

Further, with its Caviflex machine, which was introduced to the market two years ago, Cavitec offers a versatile machine, alternatively allowing the four processes in the same coating and laminating line. Particular characteristics of the Caviflex are its exchangeable coating units.

Without this approach, a laminator would have to...

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