Our History.

It all began in 1967, thanks to the famous intuition of the Seriana Valley entrepreneurs, one of the historic cradles of the Italian textile industry and still today a benchmark for the worldwide industry. Mr Gianni Radici, decided to diversify business family activities by adding another piece of the supply chain to his existing textile businesses. The same year, Somet—for the first time in the industry—invented, industrialized and launched the very first rapier weaving machine as we know it today, entirely revolutionizing the production of woven fabrics.

Over the years Somet expanded through a series of key partnership and the acquisitions of historic names of the textile industry such as the Swiss-based Sulzer Textil and the neighboring Vamatex and the solid Company at the pinnacles of the worldwide textile industry founded in 1967 evolved then into Itema Holding.

Itema built its path in the global market, improving year after year its looms, and getting closer to its Customers by opening branches all over the world. The first of them was in Pudong area in Shanghai, China.

Itema-branded first loom put together the best of expertise and textile know-how of Somet, Sulzer Textil (Sultex) and Vamatex and sets a new benchmark in airjet weaving, by combining traditional airjet weaving benefits—high speed and reduced employment costs—with superior fabric quality and substantial cost saving.

Ever since the introduction of the first rapier automatic shuttleless weaving machine by Somet in 1967, the rapier weft transfer has been widely associated with versatility—an undeniable advantage over other weft insertion systems when it comes to weaving a multitude of patterns and yarns.
Itema succeeded in building on the best technical know-how, inherited from the fusion of weaving giants Somet, Sulzer and Vamatex, with massive and continuous R&D investments, which resulted in today’s R9500 success story. The Itema R9500 embodies the top aspects of positive and negative rapier weft insertion systems offering the best balance between efficiency and versatility for the exclusive benefit of Itema Customers
Itema R9500 is a source of pride for Itema, its back bone and absolute best-seller, witnessed by an impressive installed base worldwide.

Since its settlement in Pudong District in 2002, Itema China experienced a continued growth that led the company to look for a new location, finally found in Songjiang District. Today Itema Weaving Machinery China represents a top-notch organization featuring extensive sales and after-sales teams, world-class production and assembly facilities. Itema was the first manufacturer in the weaving industry completely redefine how the loom manufacturing industry approaches Chinese market, assembling the latest generation machinery both in Europe, as well as in China, with the same attention to detail and quality, reliability and performance guarantee that Itema Customers look for when they purchase Itema machines.

ItemaLab is one of the two R&D hubs of Itema, fully dedicated to the development of never-before-seen weaving solutions. ItemaLab is located in Kilometro Rosso, the renowned Science & Technology Park just outside Bergamo, a purpose-built hub dedicated to cross-fertilization of ideas, experimentation and dialogue with the like-minded inventors from the worlds of academia, enterprise and science.
ItemaLab represents an important milestone in Itema’s continued pursuit of excellence in the field of R&D that underpins the advanced weaving machines that Itema produces and sells all over the world, a further demonstration of the Company’s commitment to anticipate, meet and exceed the needs of the most demanding weavers worldwide, providing the market with innovative weaving machines which ensure top fabric quality, reliability and the highest performance.

Itema opened its first fully-functional dedicated Training Center in 2015, to enable Customers to schedule training courses for key weaving personnel in a fully-functional dedicated facility. No matter how easy to use and intuitive the latest-generation weaving equipment can be, Itema strongly believes in the fundamental role of training as a crucial step to learn how to get the most out of one’s loom and how to safely operate them. As a result, Itema Campus in Italy was just the first of a long series.
Today, hands-on training for the product groups such as the rapier R9500, R9500terry, and airjet A9500 series looms, as well as the projectile P7300HP V8 takes place at various Itema locations around the world beside Italy, including Switzerland (Wollerau), China (Shanghai), Japan (Ibaraki), USA (Spartanburg).

On 4th October 2016, Itema opened the doors of its new offices in Mumbai. The Grand Opening was dedicated to celebrating a new milestone for the company in India, one of its most important markets and a country with a strong potential for continued growth.

In 2017, Itema launched its diversification strategy with the target to ultimately accelerate the continued expansion and secure the long-term profitability of the Company by invested into complementary, high- growth markets through stakes in innovation-driven companies which offer significant economies of scale to fuel the joint development of each others’ core businesses.
Lamiflex, leading producer of advanced composite solutions for Aerospace, Medical, Textile Machinery and Industrial applications, represented the first of a series of strategic operations aimed at broadening Itema’s spectrum of activities, through vertical and horizontal integrations.

In 2017 Itema celebrated the historic milestone of the 50 Year Anniversary since Somet establishme2015nt, forefather of the long success story of the Italian weaving Company. On the 14th of October 2017, the celebration took place exactly where everything began, in the historic HQ based in Colzate, Bergamo province, with a party dedicated to employees, shareholders, stakeholders and select Customers, to celebrate together the fundamental milestones of the Company.

The agreement signed with Schoch group in September 2019 represents a further significant step for the synergic development of key weaving machine’s accessories.
Schoch, headquartered in Italy (Ranica, Bergamo Province) and in India, is a leading producer of weaving accessories, including reeds and other components.

The Additive Technology Center is the first Italian testing and application hub for additive technologies at the service of the manufacturing industry, a technological center devoted to the growth and progress of the mechanical sector. Experimentation, prototyping, training, process development and innovation in a single incubator of ideas and businesses. ATC was born as an ambitious project, the first center in Italy with the mission of enhancing the knowledge and use of additive manufacturing technologies.
ATC was born from the experience and synergy of three leading companies in their respective sectors: DMG MORI, GFM and ITEMA. Thanks to ATC, Itema will take advantage of the opportunities in the field of additive manufacturing prototyping by involving the engineering and design skills gained in a complex industrial context.