Alpaca United ITMA 2011 Booth
Alpaca United—News From ITMA
The international Textile Machinery Association (ITMA) is the largest textile machinery association in the world representing manufacturers of opening, cleaning, carding, spinning, weaving, knitting, dying, and finishing equipment along with affiliated suppliers and vendors to the trade.
Nick Hahn, CEO
Alpaca United
Brian Hamilton, NCSU PhD Candidate
ITMA holds a trade exhibition once every four years to present new developments and technology to their textile mill customers. This event is unmatched in size and scope and attracts from 125 to 150,000 visitors over a 7 day period.
This year the event is being held in Barcelona, Spain at the Fira Barcelona Gran Via exhibition center which houses 9 aircraft hangar sized buildings linked by a glass enclosed observation deck with moving sidewalks and escalators to each hall housing the various machinery categories.
A beautiful facility with state-of-the-art logistics, communications and electrical power to support a large exposition like ITMA.
North American Alpaca Fiber is represented here this year with an exhibit and product samples from a cross section of farms and other suppliers.
The sponsoring organization in ALPACA UNITED, L3C the fiber company founded by US Alpaca breeders sharing a common interest in building profitable markets for the fiber through value added products and processes and commodity branding and promotion.
AU has a presence at ITMA with an exhibit and staff headed by Nick Hahn, ceo and including intern Brian Hamilton Phd Candidate in Textile Technology from North Carolina State University College of Textiles, Liz and Chris Vahlkamp, Suri Alpaca breeders from ST Louis MO and Robyn Kuhl, Huyacaya Alpaca breeder from Sandpoint, ID.
The exhibit itself, logo and all graphic elements were designed by Julia Balfour, LLC Lyme, CT who managed the construction phase and all elements of our ITMA involvement in Barcelona.
Day 1 and 2 were warm ups with an ever increasing volume of visitors to our booth with questions, comments and inquiries as to where and how they could purchase Alpaca fiber, tops, yarn and fabric. As we move into the weekend we expect large numbers of visitors representing a cross section of countries including Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, The EU, North and South America.
Liz & Chris Vahlkamp talking the Alpaca talk at a very busy AU booth ITMA 2011 Barcelona
These visitors will include spinners, weavers, knitters and finishers as well as research and development organizations and universities.
This is a seminal event for the North American Alpaca Fiber industry and Alpaca United, L3C is proud to have had the opportunity to represent the some 10,000 breeders raising animals and producing our luxurious fiber!
Stay tuned, we’ll be posting daily updates on this space.
Adios
Nick
