Techtextil

Well that's that for another two years. Note to self  "give yourself more than one day next time". 

I'm not sure whether it was because I was there as a free agent or whether the show was actually a lot more interesting than previous years, probably a bit of both, but I know I had some great meetings and hopefully we'll all be better for it. It's certainly the technical textile show to visit in Europe if not the world.

Of course the show gets everyone in the world of technical textiles together for those brief three days every two years and it's the opportunity to catch up with some old friend and acquaintances. One of those was my very great friend from my days at Karl Mayer in the late 80's Marcus Regenstein. Every two years we contact each other and arrange to meet but every time something gets in the way so this year I am so glad we managed to meet.

He was exhibiting a new patented product his company Penn Textile Solutions had developed in conjunction with a Dutch company to provide a unique shading system for commercial greenhouses and together they have formed a new company called Elasol Pro-Solar Systems. As with all great inventions it is very simple but very clever and is going to add so much more control to the commercial growers operations around the world. On the back of this they have also developed a similar technique for controlling the amount of light that comes in through these new highrise glass buildings that seem so popular in major cities now. The Shard in London incorporates this system to control the solar gain in the building and therefore reducing the reliance on air-conditioning to cool the building. Take a look at the Elasol website.