Lectra announced today a strategic partnership with the French company, AQC. As a major player in the fashion, automotive and furniture markets, Lectra contributes to the Industry 4.0 revolution by providing software, cutting equipment, data analytics solutions and associated services to brands, manufacturers and retailers.
Founded in 2019, AQC develops and sells SaaS solutions based on Artificial Intelligence and innovative equipment for automatic textile defect recognition powered by machine learning algorithms. AQC aims to accelerate the textile quality control processes, which are still largely manual and rely on the expertise of highly skilled operators.
“Partnering with a leading technology company like Lectra, which has a strong presence in the fashion industry, will allow us to accelerate our technical and commercial development,” declare Pierre Magrangeas and Christian Bracich, co-founders of AQC.
“AQC’s ambition to bring textile quality control into the era of Industry 4.0 and address sustainability challenges perfectly aligns with the Lectra group’s strategy,” says Maximilien Abadie, Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Product Officer of Lectra.
“This strategic partnership will allow our customers to benefit from AQC’s expertise and will strengthen Lectra’s value proposition by incorporating an additional link in the value chain for our fashion customers.” This strategic partnership involves the acquisition of a minority stake of about 30% in the capital of AQC, through a capital investment of 1.3 million euros. Lectra has options to gradually increase its stake in AQC to support its development.
