BTMA expands support for members

This transcription has been AI generated and therefore may have some inaccuracies.

BTMA expands support for members

In this Fireside Chat, the British Textile Machinery Association’s (BTMA’s) CEO Jason Kent talks to WTiN’s senior digital textile lead and editor Joseph Link about how the textile industry is evolving with the introduction of digitalised solutions.

Joseph Link
Hello everyone, and welcome to this WTN interview today, I'm joined by the British Textile Machinery Association's CEO, Jason Kent to talk a little bit about new developments within the BTMA, some key events to look out for, and also a little bit about the broader economy and what's happening in the UK and how it will impact BTMA members. So Jason, thank you for joining us today. It's good to join you here in Leeds at the studio, face to face.

So to begin with, thank you obviously, for taking the time to join us. Could you just explain, for the people who might not know you, who are watching a little bit about who you are and your background? 

Jason Kent
My background is engineering. I started off as an apprentice engineer in carpet tufting machinery over 35 years ago, and I was in industry up until three years and then I decided to take on this role within the btma and give a little bit back to the to wider textile industry.

Joseph Link
Good, brilliant. And so I know you came to talk about developments at the BTMA, I understand there's a new industry roadmap that you want to talk about. So can you explain a bit about I mean?

Jason Kent
We do have a newsletter, which we put out to our membership to keep them engaged of everything we're doing within the btma, and I felt it was great to come here today to talk to the wider audience about all the things that we've been doing in the last three years within the btma, and where we think the industry is going and how we can best support them. And what become very apparent was we've been a very as an association, a trade association, we've been very insular, historically, kept ourselves to ourselves, and I don't just mean from the rest of the industry. I actually mean between the members as well. So a couple of years ago, I decided, decided to start an initiative where we had member networking events, getting the members together. It started off quite small.

We always held them at a neutral site that was quite interesting and thematic. So we had an event at the AMRC in Sheffield and at the national composite center, and just last year, we had one at the National Center for motorsport engineering.

And hopefully that inspires our membership a little bit on innovation and what's going on in the wider engineering community and our industry is so diverse that it was very, very difficult to try and decide how best to support our members. So we decided upon quite an ambitious task of trying to put an industry roadmap together for textile machinery. And we had to keep it quite high level, quite generalized, and we eventually categorize some like theme based objectives. So, you know, we had a number of goals within there, relating to industry, working with academia, which seems to be quite a barrier. It has been in the past, one addressing skills and talent, another one looking at new technologies, looking at the funding landscape, and, of course, sustainability, and I think all them categories are applicable to all our members? Yeah. And were you touching on the two working groups? Yeah. What came out of it was, you know, these ideas became so popular that we had to put some focus. And I wanted it to be member driven, rather than myself or the btma thinking on what what they what I think they need. And we've created two working groups we and again, it was collectively decided what these working groups would be when we had our last member networking event. And one was one working group that were forming is to do with reclamation of fibers, which is, which is, you know, very relevant within the industry at the moment. And the other is to do with a digital presence and technology access, because a lot of our members are SMEs that don't have access to some of these new technologies, like augmented reality, virtual reality, 3d printing. And so we're creating a working group to steer you know how best we can support our members on helping them to access these technologies.

Going back to the other working group, the reclamation of fibers, that's that's to look at projects on how best we as a as an entire membership can deliver a repurposing of, you know, a reclamation of fibers in glass fiber, carbon fiber, natural fibers. So again, within that group, there's still diverse industries in there, but it's a necessary area, and there's a lot of cross industry sectors who are looking to the textile machinery sector to help deliver them solutions.

Joseph Link
Yeah, absolutely, that's really interesting. So I also understand that you've expanded your membership structure. So what does that mean, and in practice, how will your members benefit as an insular Association.

Jason Kent
You know, you had to be a textile machinery manufacturer or a test equipment manufacturer in textiles to become a member. And for me, the BTMA is about joining the dots, having access to the wider network, network networks within the industry. And so I decided that we should introduce an associate membership level, because I could see a lot of fabric producers out there who were actually doing their own retrofits and their own improvements on machinery within their production machines, but very innovative in some cases, but they expressed a desire to join the btma and have access to the machinery industry network. And there wasn't able to. So we we introduced the Associate Member membership level this year, and we've also introduced an academia, an institute level of membership as well. And as a result of that, right here in Leeds, Leeds University have now joined. Huddersfield University are now a member. It's been well received so far, very, very well received so far, yeah, yeah. And traditionally, you've always provided financial support for your members going to exhibitions. Yeah, I mean, we're a not for profit, so you know, What? What? What profits we make within the btma, you know, appropriated back to our members. And historically, that's been done through discretionary subsidies. And to do that, you had to you actually exhibit a trade show, which is great. You know, promoting our members and supporting them exhibiting at trade shows. But trade shows, certainly post pandemic have been have become quite costly. So travel costs, exhibition costs, hotel costs have doubled. Budgets have remained the same, so our members are really, really having to be very focused on what trade shows they go to now. And as a result of that, some of our members have elected to say we're not going to exhibit every year. We may only exhibit every two years. We may only ever exhibit four years. And we actually had a large percentage of our members who just don't exhibit, they don't need to, they don't need to go to trade shows. So they was missing out on this financial support.

So again, it's an initiative that we've introduced this year. So there is a pot of money. It's divided out between our members on an annual basis, and now our members can can access that funding for going to conferences, paid conferences now for training and apprenticeships. So how come conferences weren't included initially? I don't think conferences was actually seen as as important historically as they probably are now. I mean, you know, for some really high quality conferences out there, where our members are visiting conferences because they want to diversify into different sectors, so they'll attend a conference just to dip the toe in the water to see where, you know what opportunities the industry offers. And so, yeah, that's been well received.

On training and apprenticeships. We're now offering the engineering and textile apprenticeships on the block release, and again, we're encouraging our members further afield, because the course is actually delivered by Calderdale College and the textile Center of Excellence, you know, local to the northwest here, and that sort of excludes some of our members. So now, as part of this funding, our members can draw travel and accommodation, subsistence for the apprentices who are on block, release those who want to go down the innovation route or apply for a patent, can also apply for innovation vouchers now, using that pot of money.

And if somebody just wants some enhanced marketing, if WTA at tin, for example, then we're able to do that. So so there's plenty on offer for plenty on offer now, and we're not excluding those, those members who don't fit the exhibition criteria. From the past, it's been very disproportionate, and I'm just trying to balance that out. It's about it's about valid membership value at the in the end, absolutely. 

Joseph Link
Yeah. So. Moving on slightly. I know you've got a new position on the textile Institute Council. Yes, yes. How did that come about? 

Jason Kent
So I'm now, I'm on the council, and I'm now Vice President for industry. The TI has been reinventing itself for a while. It's been bit like the BTMA. It's been modernizing, and my view was that the member benefits, particularly for industry, for corporate members, needs to be more attractive.

And I felt there was a lot of synergies between the BTMA and the textile Institute in the role that I play, where hopefully we, you know, I could transpose that over into the textile Institute.

Yeah, the corporate, corporate membership, I'd like to see more attuned to industry. There's lots of potential there with industry representation within the textile Institute. And the textile Institute is something we in the UK should be proud of, it's world renowned. And when they took the role on, I was very surprised that I was getting congratulations from people as far afield as Bangladesh, India and New Zealand. So, you know, they follow a textile Institute. They hold it in very high esteem. And I just want to, just want to elevate that from from an industry perspective, so I decided to be put up for election, and I was unanimously voted. So yeah, so you'll be seeing me in in other roles as well. Very sure. 

Joseph Link
Congratulations. So let's look ahead now, next year, at my region, we'll be moving to Singapore, and it's very significant exhibition for your members.

Jason Kent
What are your thoughts about that? ITMA, Singapore? Very exciting. We haven't had one for quite a number of years.

Over half of our members will certainly be exhibiting at ITMA Singapore. We see it as a truly international stage to exhibit on

ITMA ASIA in Shanghai is somewhat a national show for China. We feel this will be truly international. There was a lot of countries that was somewhat excluded from it, Mar in Milan last year. We know a lot of Indian clients struggled with visas.

Don't see any value of traveling to the Chinese show. So this is attracting new, new people, new markets, as well as the established ones as well.

There's much less exclusion with holding it in in Singapore, the visa restrictions are almost non existent.

So for our members, yeah, it's it's quite an exciting event to look forward to. In terms of development that's going to come to the show. We're still over a year away, yet we are aware of, of course, we can't talk about it, new development that our members are working on. But we also, I do know a lot of our members want to bring their their their technology that they exhibited in in Milan last year to that show, to give those who come, I imagine there'll be some significant advancements. But if you can talk about specific developments, what, what are the key trends that they're working towards on cycling, recycling is a big one.

You know, there's going to be a new chapter in Hanover, in 2027 covering recycling. So that's very, very exciting. And of course, digitalization, growth in digitalization and AI, everybody's got high hopes.

We don't quite know where, where the industry is exactly going, but we're starting to see clusters now on polarization of these types of technologies, where they are being adopted in real life production environment.

Joseph Link
So if you come back back to the UK, another so it's obviously an event closer to home, is the International composite Summit, taking place

Jason Kent
Yeah, early September, I believe, isn't it? So September, it was the btma, are a member of composites UK, and we have a number of our members who are also in the composite sector, Sydney, Texan, for example, and roaches. And we decided that we wanted to be a supporting partner, because we feel that composites are a significant player in textiles now, not just for the future, and that's only going to grow the side of composites that where I'm particularly interested in is the recycling of carbon fiber and glass fiber. Yeah.

And that's really why I want some presence at the show, because I just want to understand

the barriers within the automotive and the aerospace industry to recycling fibers, and it all fits in with our with our working group that we've talked about as well. So we've got a pop there.

Joseph Link
We're going to, we're going to find a flag from the textile machinery industry, because we do feel that this sector has a part to play in the future of composites. Yeah, any, I assume, for anybody watching, who may want to attend, that will will put the website for the event in, yes, in the intro for this, we're advertising it quite a lot now. And, yeah, cool, brilliant. And a big event early last month. So that was July. Was the general election in the UK, and the new labor government, who have come up with a new industrial strategy, we have one now. We have one now. Yes, so what is the reaction of the BTMA members, and how do they hope to benefit from it? 

Jason Kent
It's been received positively, but obviously it's the deliverables that's the key factor here. It's okay. Talking a nice talk is what we can do. Prior to that, we made some real big inroads with the Department of Business and trade, making contact with them, and actually getting the textile machinery industry on the radar with them. And they wasn't that aware that we had a thriving industry here in the UK.

So that's helped a little bit with making connections. I mean, Labor's mission is to deliver growth, and you know, they recognize now that we have world class universities and advanced manufacturing facilities.

But yeah, these words have, you know, we first time we've ever heard it in government where, you know, advanced materials and advanced manufacturing have been, been been actually mentioned, let alone in the same sentence, and they're inextricably linked. And when we talk about advanced materials, we are talking about composites, carbon fiber, technical textiles and things like that.

So we actually feel that, you know, we were very positive that we have a part to play in the industrial strategy going forward, the how remains uncertain. Well, we'll have to wait and see. You know, there's big, big ambitions.

Even labor admit that. You know, it's a very ambitious project that they've got.

They're sort of using an industry policy blueprint for the delivery of the coronavirus vaccine. I'm not sure that that transposes across to everyday projects, so to speak, but it's mission based. One of their big things is clean power. That all links back into technical textiles and composites and things that we're doing there, and the trend of sustainability, which is they're actually looking across industry connections now with the supply chain. So yeah, we remain very, very positive, but a trade policy, that's what our members would like to see. You know, champion at a global level, representation of having pavilions, industry pavilions around the world at exhibitions. We used to get trade Access Program funding to put on the pavilion at exhibitions like tech, tech, post Brexit, that all dried up. There's no funding there. So we would really like to see some support, funding for attending trade shows, and how would you go about lobbying for that? We're members of export partners UK, which the membership, there is quite a number of trade associations within the UK, very diverse, from equine to food, to text our machinery. So we joint lobby. That's where we get our weight behind it. We're very effective. They're very effective at what they do.

Joseph Link
We get closer into government and government policy than we would do without doing that. So yeah, that's really interesting, yeah, and he's because I know you've you mentioned there about sort of the innovative solutions that a lot of your members are working towards, which we hope will, we will see it in Singapore next year,

but in a few weeks time, Jason will be taking part in the fireside chat to discuss about those solutions in a lot more detail, utilizing digital twins, I believe, and artificial intelligence.

Jason Kent
Yes, because I have, I've done some keynote speaking. Just recently, attended some conferences, and I was, I was quite alarmed at the lack of awareness that we have a thriving textile machinery industry here.

In the UK, and we're adopting world class technologies here in the UK, market leaders and a lot of people who attending these conferences was unaware of it, so yeah, it would be great. 

Joseph Link
So I would encourage everybody watching to keep a look out for that fireside chat that like I said, Well, it is coming in in the next few weeks, but for now, thank you, Jason for for joining me today. It was really good listening to the developments at the BTMA And yeah, I wish you have your members and yourself all the best.