The latest Monforts Montex 8500 stenter provides major benefits for Hugotag – the French luxury brands fabric supplier renowned for its know-how in silk finishing. Now a member of the Chanel Group, Hugotag in its present form represents the merging five years ago of two former silk businesses – Tag, founded in 1974 in Fourneaux, and Hugo Soie, a St Etienne-based company with a 200-year history.

Investment in new equipment has followed the merger and consolidation of the companies at the Fourneaux site, including advanced digital printing machines, as well as the installation of a finishing line centred on the latest Monforts Montex 8500 stenter and a Matex padder.

The five-chamber Montex 8500 machine at the Fourneaux plant is equipped with newly-developed 24-inch visualisation monitors, providing total, intuitive automation and surveillance via the Monforts Qualitex 800 system.

As introduced, sheer muslins can be as light as 14gsm, along with chiffons, and heavier satins and twills. The weights of the more delicate fabrics are usually between 20-50gsm, and produced in average widths of 90cm to a maximum of 1.9m on the 3.2m wide Monforts finishing range. In haute couture fine fashion, of course, they command very high prices.

As a result of the extremely specialist nature of handling such delicate fabrics, the Monforts line has been equipped with a number of additional features, including special needle chain devices for dealing with knitted silk fabrics, a steamer unit, a computerised weft-straightening device and associated controls, and a horizontal combined chain.

The stentering chain is completely sealed to avoid any grease or oil coming into contact with the fabrics at any time and fitted with long-lasting lubricated bearings. Special attention has also been paid to energy recovery, with low energy consumption IE3 motors and the integration of a full heat recovery system into the line. Hugotag confirmed that the line offers significant energy savings.

The delicate fabrics require a sensitive treatment when being pinned into the stentering chain, as well as very gentle drying – without the fabrics ever touching the nozzles and with absolutely no air turbulence in the dryer.

“The humidity inside the stenter is crucial for ensuring a perfect quality fabric feel,” adds French representative for Monforts, Christophe Monel, of Monel Industrie Services.

“More than anything, however, zero defects are our objective, and this is something the new highly-automated and computerised Monforts line allows us to achieve,” says Hugotag Director General Philippe Magat.