Heberlein has put a new service center into operation in Shengze City, China, as of August 2026, placing the Swiss supplier of air interlacing and texturing jets for synthetic filament yarns closer to a customer base it has spent two decades building.

The center provides local access to technical support and product expertise, plus fast service. Its equipment — a portable air generator, an ultrasonic cleaning system, an air flow meter and an air interlacing device — allows service work and application tests to run directly at customer plants. The team also handles troubleshooting, technical support during product trials and maintenance.

CEO Martin Zuercher framed the opening as a commitment signal. "We opened the service center in China as part of our long-term commitment to the Chinese market. The new service center allows us faster response times, stronger technical support and closer interaction with our customers," he said in a statement.

The location decision follows significant growth in China over the past 20 years, according to the company. Heberlein's DTY jets now serve both modernization projects at existing plants and new capacity builds. The company stresses that compressed air consumption is a costly resource and a key performance indicator for textile operations, and it positions its air-saving technologies as its competitive edge on that cost line.

Air savings, vendor-tested

Heberlein will present its APh and APe series for DTY applications at ITMA Asia + CITME 2026 in Shanghai, scheduled for November 20–24, 2026. Visitors will find the company at Stand D41 in Hall H6.1, where specialists will assess each plant's improvement potential across processes, costs and quality.

The commercial pitch rests on compressed air. Heberlein notes that low air consumption and low operating costs now rank high on many yarn producers' priority lists. The APh series stands out, the company says, by offering either higher knot strength or lower compressed air consumption. In applications using PES dtex 330f96, the APh213 can cut air consumption by up to 10 percent, a saving Heberlein links to more reliable processability in downstream production or lower operating costs.

The APe series posts the bigger number. In company tests, the new-generation Advanced Performance DTY interlacing jets reduced compressed air consumption by up to 15 percent, and Heberlein says the saving comes without compromising yarn quality. The company calculates that an investment in the new jet series can pay for itself in roughly 18 months.

Those figures are vendor test data, not independently audited results. Mills weighing a switch can benchmark the claims against their own metering — and the Shengze center's portable test equipment now gives them a local route to do exactly that.

Air Covering demand runs high

Heberlein also reports strong Chinese demand for Air Covering technology. The process interlaces elastane yarn with a covering yarn at defined intervals using a controlled air jet. The resulting yarns deliver high stretch, comfort and good surface properties, and go into leggings, sportswear, underwear, socks and tights, stretch pants and denim, elastic cuffs, and medical and compression textiles.

The process allows precise tuning of yarn structure to end-use requirements. Producers adjust air pressure, jet geometry, overfeed, elastane draw and production speed to hit a target interlacing level and yarn performance. Heberlein adds that the combined yarn structure also simplifies subsequent knitting and weaving.

What to watch

The Shengze center, live since August, and the Shanghai showcase in November give Heberlein two touchpoints with Chinese DTY producers within a single quarter. Whether local service capacity plus measured air savings converts into orders across China's modernization and new-build pipeline will become clearer after ITMA Asia + CITME 2026 closes on November 24.