Obertshausen - Following this year's acquisition of Stoll by the Karl Mayer Group, the flat knitting and warp knitting manufacturers' North American activities are to be integrated, a move which will see a significant expansion of Karl Mayer's facility in North Carolina.
The move will see Stoll America’s operation in New York City closed and resources and activities integrated into Karl Mayer’s Greensboro, North Carolina location. This process started in October 2020 and will be completed at the end of the year.
The Stoll core team in its new location will include business and technical management, textile design and product development, Stoll machine programming, and customer service. Some team members will relocate from New York and others will be new.
The team’s focus will be twofold. As well as continuing to serve the needs of the Stoll machine market with innovative machines, spare parts and technical service, they will also provide innovation support services to customers, brands, incubators, startups and educational institutions. These support services include textile product design and development, sample, prototype and small collection production and training.
For these new activities, Karl Mayer is making a major investment in the Greensboro building, adding a state-of-the-art textile development and visitor center. The centre will have customer collaboration and training areas with end-product samples, Stoll machines for demonstration, training and production purposes, and a prototype finishing and assembly operation.
The new center will offer similar collaboration opportunities for industry partners working with other Karl Mayer technologies and is expected to be completed in March 2021.
Tony Hooimeijer, president of Karl Mayer North America, said he was looking forward to the joint innovation projects with many partners and for a wide variety of textile applications. "With the new development and visitor center and the synergies that come with combining our capabilities, we offer textile producers and all industries that can imagine the use of textiles an extremely strong resource in North America," he said.
