Texkimp
Design in Durban

With extensive experience from many years of involvement in the following market sectors, the range of creels available from Texkimp will meet the technical requirements of the most demanding applications and fibres down to the simplest entry level processes.

We create long-term partnerships with customers and other equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that deliver greater value and benefit than standard customer-supplier relationships. We offer unparalleled levels of flexibility and innovative approaches to working together in order to support our customers’ business objectives and allow our partners to benefit commercially and technically from our core strengths. This approach includes working under complete confidentiality with customers who seek extra practical assistance and expertise as they develop their in-house processes. We actively encourage our customers and partners to visit our extensive showroom and test facility in Cheshire, in the North West of England, where you are invited to trial your own materials and evaluate the benefits of our solutions. Here, all of our products are expertly finished and quality controlled before being shipped, unassembled, part or fully assembled, to our customers throughout the world. Georg Sahm is a leading expert in the design and manufacture of take-up winders. Established in 1945 and based in Eschwege, Germany, the company forms part of the Starlinger Group. Cygnet Texkimp has a rich and illustrious history rooted in the British textile machinery industry of the mid twentieth century. The company began life in 1974 when the original Texkimp business was founded by our Chairman Colin Smith to supply unwinding machinery to the textile manufacturing industry. Based at Quarry Bank Mill close to Manchester Airport, Bill’s business was perfectly positioned to harness the opportunities that a relatively strong British textile industry presented. The UK textile industry, which was built on traditional natural fibres including cotton, wool, jute and linen, developed and grew with the introduction of new synthetic fibres. Demand for new technical fibres such as nylon, polyester, polypropylene and acrylic triggered WHK’s move into the field of technical fibre processing. Bill and Colin’s extensive expertise in the traditional market sealed their success, and some of the first woven carbon fibre produced in the UK was woven directly from a WHK creel. By 1970, the UK textile industry was in steep decline as textile producers moved production to lower cost countries, and many manufacturing companies struggled to survive amid a strong trade union movement. WHK was sold, Bill retired, and the traditional UK textile market continued to flounder. In 1974, Colin and his wife Janet founded the Texkimp business to develop a new range of unwinding machines and accessories for the growing international technical and high performance fibre market. After several years of continued effort to establish the business as an accepted supplier, Texkimp began to blossom as a niche manufacturer among global customers that were hungry for its expertise and blend of practical and technical know-how. Texkimp’s reputation spread and the company began penetrating the markets of North America and Western Europe before heading into Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the developing economies of China, India and Vietnam. He spent ten years working in all areas of Texkimp; opening new markets, building strategic relationships, and selling overseas before taking overall leadership of the business in At the same time, Texkimp’s parent company Cygnet Group was created as an organisation of diverse engineering companies providing bespoke solutions to niche global markets. Today, the renamed Cygnet Texkimp is a global market-leader in the manufacture of specialist machinery to handle and process technical fibres and fabrics used in the automotive, aerospace and wind energy sectors. We still manufacture 98% of our machines in the UK using raw materials sourced almost exclusively from British suppliers, and we export 95% of our machines globally. We employ some of the most talented mechanical and electrical design engineers in the market, who work alongside experienced in-house teams of automation, robotics, software and after-sales specialists to deliver an end-to-end service that will satisfy the most complex technological demands. Our considerable investment in R&D ensures we remain at the forefront of our markets, providing our customers with cutting-edge machines that allow them to achieve the highest levels of efficiency, productivity and quality.