Picanol rolled off its 100,000th rapier weaving machine at its plant in Leper, Belgium. The 100,000th rapier weaving machine — an OptiMax-i — will be shipped to SAITEX Fabrics, based in Long Tho, Vietnam.

Picanol has an extensive track record in the production of high-tech rapier machines. In 1975, it launched its very first weaving machine with a rapier insertion, which was named the PGW. Since the launch of the first rapier machine all that time ago, Picanol has introduced various new generations of rapier machines. These include, among other machines, the GTM in 1983, the Gamma in 1996, the GamMax in 2002, and the OptiMax and the GT-Max in 2007. Its current flagship rapier weaving machines — the OptiMax-i launched in 2015, and the GTMax-i 3.0 launched in 2018 — cover a complete range of applications.