Groz-Beckert hosted more than a dozen knitting technology specialists and research teams at its Albstadt headquarters on 7 and 8 October 2026 for the first edition of The Loop, a new seminar series focused on medical textiles. The company confirmed the event will run as an ongoing international series covering further applications and challenges in knitting.

Presenters included Shima Seiki, Merz, Memminger-Iro, Lonati and researchers from universities in Pisa and Albstadt-Sigmaringen. The audience drew heavily from Europe's leading manufacturers of compression hosiery and knitted orthopaedic products — the supply-chain tier most exposed to the technologies on show.

"The requirements for the knitting industry are becoming increasingly complex – from new materials and application areas to digital development and production processes," said Marco Riecher, Head of Sales Knitting at Groz-Beckert.

What did the suppliers present?

Groz-Beckert opened the technical programme with component developments: optimised latch designs, reinforced needle latches and more robust needle hooks engineered for technical knitting conditions. The company stressed application-specific development with machinery manufacturers and textile producers as the working model.

Shima Seiki Italia's Giulio Codato presented the company's WHOLEGARMENT technology, introduced in 1995, alongside the SWG-XR machine range and SDS-ONE APEX design systems supporting virtual sampling. Digital platforms Shima Online, yarnbank and ShimaNavi connect material selection, design and manufacturing in one ecosystem.

Merz, founded in Hechingen in 1900, detailed its compression hosiery machinery business: a 6,400 square metre facility, roughly 70 employees, and more than 3,000 machines installed across over 30 countries. Its circular knitting machines run cylinder diameters of 4½ to 6 inches with 320 to 452 needles depending on model. Photovoltaic installations from 2008 and 2012 now cover more than half of the company's electricity needs — a verifiable energy claim, not a marketing label.

Memminger-Iro, a Vandewiele group company, quantified the demands on yarn feeding: delivery at 1,500 metres per minute, motor speeds of 10,000 rpm, and up to almost 39 million start-stop cycles per year on a single device. Its EFS technology regulates tension through millisecond-based control loops, with CANopen connectivity feeding tension values directly into knitting programmes.

Lonati closed with Mattia Polimeni and Luca Vecchi presenting Orion programming, Dinema's Arcadia production platform and the DSC EVO measurement system, which delivers dimensional accuracy of ±1 mm. Orion Predictive, an AI-assisted tool, aims to predict machine settings from yarn characteristics and target dimensions.

Where does the research stand?

Two academic presentations framed the medium-term pipeline. Leonardo Cappello of the BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa, showed knitted textiles as actuation and sensing elements in soft robotics — pneumatically actuated gloves and lower-body exoskeleton concepts. His institute's Robot Power programme runs a second edition in February 2027.

Dr Christian Kaiser and Ellen Judith Mueller of Albstadt-Sigmaringen University presented an exploratory AI concept built around "knittability" — assessing whether digital designs can be manufactured on industrial machines, tested so far on knitted shoe uppers. The researchers stressed the technology supports rather than replaces designers, and validation work remains.

"With The Loop, we are creating an international platform designed to strengthen dialogue within the knitting industry over the long term," said Matthias Häckel, Head of Brand at Groz-Beckert Group. "The positive response to the premiere shows that we are on the right track."

The programme also included a factory tour of Groz-Beckert's component production and machine demonstrations. The core message for buyers: medical knitting capacity is converging on integrated digital workflows — design, programming, measurement and production data linked end to end. Compression hosiery and orthopaedic knitters should now weigh machine investments against measurable gains in sampling cost, dimensional consistency and development speed.