Monforts Brand Guidelines: An 1884 Mönchengladbach Raising-Machine Maker in CHTC Fong’s

A Rhineland engineer and 52 workers.

Monforts began at the end of 1884, when the engineer August Monforts opened a textile machinery factory in Mönchengladbach with 52 workers. The Neue Deutsche Biographie, in its 1997 entry, says he was born in 1850 at Gerderath, near Erkelenz, and that he timed the venture well: the economy was recovering, and finishing work had become important in the knitted-goods trade. The company’s own history says the first works stood on Kronprinzenstraße.

He began with one process, raising, which brushes up the surface of a fabric. The Neue Deutsche Biographie says he developed a raising machine with five rollers and a warming plate and delivered the first to Saxony. From 1886 he built drum machines with 14 rollers under a patent from L. Riedel, and sold them in southern Germany and Westphalia and abroad to Austria, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Poland and Russia.

Monforts says a 24-roller machine followed in 1891. Textile World, in its report on the 140th anniversary, says 24-roller machines were shown at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, and the company says they received the highest accolades there. In 1897 August Monforts set up an iron foundry so that the works could cast its own machine parts.

His son Joseph Monforts, born in 1883, changed the machine. The Neue Deutsche Biographie credits him with the first larger-scale use of ball bearings in textile machinery, on raising machine rollers, in 1907, and with the plan of the new textile and machine tool works of 1916. A machine of that generation came home a century later: a 36-roller raising machine built in 1918, in service at a plant in Poland until about 2000, was returned to Mönchengladbach as a showpiece, Textile World reported in February 2021.

Machine tools became a second business. Monforts says semi-automatic machine tools joined the range from 1920, and the Neue Deutsche Biographie says Joseph took the lathes towards highly automated production lines, with England an important market. Textile World says four generations of the family oversaw the company. Monforts names Joseph’s nephews Dietrich and Caspar Monforts von Hobe as the third generation, and Clemens A. Monforts von Hobe as owner and head from 1986 to 2006.

The stenter and two sales.

The product that defines Monforts today arrived after the war. The company says it built its first stenter, which dries and sets fabric under tension, in 1950, and calls it the “father of all stenters.” Its later ranges have their own names: Montex stenters, Thermex continuous dyeing ranges, Monfortex compressive shrinking ranges and DynAir relaxation dryers, the set Textile World listed in 2024. In 1994, Monforts says, it developed the Econtrol continuous dyeing process with the company now known as DyStar Colours Distribution.

A second factory shaped the brand. The Montex works at St. Stefan, near Klagenfurt in Austria, had been an independent business since 1982, Innovation in Textiles reported in 2016, and it has built Monforts finishing machines for more than four decades. That year it was renamed to tie it more closely to the parent company, and in 2015 Monforts had taken over production of coating units from the Austrian maker Timatec.

A third link led to China. Monforts formed a joint venture with Hong Kong’s Fong’s, known as Monforts Fong’s or Monfongs. Textile World Asia dated it to 1998 and Monforts dates it to 1999.

The family let go in 2006. Textile World reported that year that L. Possehl & Co. of Lübeck had acquired A. Monforts Textilmaschinen as an independent business segment, while the Monforts von Hobe family kept control of Monforts Werkzeugmaschinen, the machine tool company. The two businesses have gone separate ways since. German Wikipedia says the machine tool company changed hands several times and moved to Wickrath, in the south of Mönchengladbach, in 2021, and it now trades as Monforts CNC Werkzeugmaschinentechnik.

The textile company moved too. In 2011, Monforts says, it left for a new site in Mönchengladbach, which German Wikipedia identifies as the former Schlafhorst premises. The old works has its own afterlife: German Wikipedia says the industrial complex was added to the city’s list of protected monuments on 16 November 2015 and now houses about 20 companies as the Monforts-Quartier, and that the foundry, sold in 2007, closed in 2011 after a second insolvency.

The sale to Asia followed. On 21 June 2012 Textile World Asia reported that Fong’s Industries, already part of China Hi-Tech Group after a takeover Textile World Asia had reported in 2011, had acquired Monforts from Possehl, together with Montex and the Monfongs stake, with Possehl keeping a 9.9 percent share of the joint venture. Monforts and German Wikipedia date its membership of the CHTC Fong’s Group to 2013, and Monforts says it first appeared at ITMA in 2015 as part of that group.

How the category presents itself.

Textile machinery is sold through scale. A spinning frame can run the length of a mill hall, so makers often photograph it from one end, with spindles and yarn packages receding in a long line. Looms are shown mid-beat, with the rapier or the reed caught in motion. The pictures are less about a single object than about a repeated one, thousands of identical parts working in rows.

The opposite view is the close-up. Catalogues and websites in this trade move in tightly on needles, yarn guides, rings and travellers, because the product’s precision is hard to see from across a hall. Cones of coloured yarn supply the colour that grey and white machine casings lack, and flat-knitted sample panels show what a machine’s pattern work can do. 3D-knitted shoes and technical fabrics do the same for newer markets.

Software has joined the picture. Control touchscreens, status lights and mill-monitoring dashboards now appear next to the steel, as makers present automation and digital services alongside the machine. Saurer, for one, promotes LED operator guidance on its Autocoro 11 rotor machine.

The trade meets at its fairs, and these set much of the calendar for launches and imagery. ITMA, ITMA Asia, Techtextil and ShanghaiTex are the names that recur in these companies’ news pages, and a stand there works much as a catalogue does, with working machines, sample walls and yarn displays. Few makers in this guide publish a brand rulebook. Their identities show up instead in a company name carried over many decades, in product family names, and in how they picture the machine.

Production returns to Mönchengladbach.

Monforts still describes itself as German. Its website calls it “German textile machine engineering since 1884,” with design engineering, machine development, spare parts, sales and accounting at the Mönchengladbach headquarters, and a list of sister names under CHTC Fong’s that includes Goller, Then and Xorella. It calls itself a market leader in textile finishing machines and uses the phrase “leader in innovation” as its standard; those are its claims.

The headquarters also holds a test floor. The Advanced Technology Centre, opened in 2013, covers 1,200 square metres and houses two full finishing lines and a Thermex range, Textile World reported in 2024, and Monforts says customers can run fabric trials there. Recent work has followed energy and technical textiles: Monforts lists a 2019 cooperation with KMA on exhaust air cleaning and heat recovery, a government-funded project called WasserSTOFF from 2023, and a 2024 spray application cooperation with BW Converting and Archroma.

The company marked its 140th anniversary in 2024 under the motto “140 Years of Performance, Innovation and Partners,” Textile World reported. Volker Gingter, who first joined Monforts in 2000, became managing director on 1 January 2026, succeeding Gunnar Meyer, the same publication said.

The largest recent change came on 24 July 2026. Monforts announced that, because of the economic situation, geopolitical uncertainty and persistently weak demand for textile machinery, it would relocate production from St. Stefan to Mönchengladbach, along with logistics, spare parts, warehousing and shipping. It called giving up the Austrian site after more than 40 years “a tough step.” Current orders are still being built in Austria, the company said, and it expects to complete the transition by the end of March 2027, with visitors invited to the new production facility from April 2027.

The identity is restrained. The logo file on the company’s website uses a dark green and a light grey, and the site pairs a brighter green with near-black, though no brand specification is published. The family name has stayed on the company through both owners since 2006.

For a design guide, Monforts shows how a founder’s surname can outlast the family’s ownership when the product names stay stable. Compare Trützschler, another textile machinery name from Mönchengladbach, and KARL MAYER, the German warp-knitting machine maker. For this guide we use a green and two greys with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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