'Automation biggest need for apparel industry'

02 Jun '18

2 min read

Courtesy: Must Garment

In the face of inflation of wages, energy and food and commodities, automation and investment in technology has become the biggest opportunity and need of the apparel industry considering how labour-intense the industry is, said Sanjay Mahtani, owner, Must Garment Corporation. The firm has benefitted by investing in RFID production technology and nanotech.

“We have invested heavily in RFID production technology and nanotech and foam dyeing for our wet processing. Some of these efforts have brought about as much as 98 per cent savings in water and huge savings in energy and chemicals that are used in the production of our garments, said Mahtani in an exclusive interview with Fibre2Fashion.

Talking about the impact of Donald Trump’s election as the president of the US, Mahtani said, “We manufacture goods in Bangladesh and the Middle East. The new US policies were helpful in some ways, but not in others. In the Middle East, there are no likely TPL extensions possible; hence, the duty-free status will go away in a lot of the countries that have impacted us in Bahrain and Oman, and now we are moving to Jordan which has a more stable FTA. On the other hand, pulling out of TPP perhaps put the brakes on the possible duty-free status in Vietnam, which might assist us in the long term.”

Mahtani believes that even post Brexit, the UK will continue to have the same GSP rules that exist in EU.

Must, a manufacturer and supplier of high-quality garments, supplies products to some of the top brands like JC Penney, Walmart, Macy's, Target, Ann Taylor and Amazon. It has manufacturing units in Bangladesh, Jordan and Oman that manufacture over 60 million pieces per year.

Click here to read the complete interview.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India