Strike of 1984 turning point for Indian textile sector

28 Jan '13

5 min read

When quizzed on how Soma Textiles has survived all the downturns, Mr Somany reveals, “During and post the strike period, we too felt the heat from the unorganized sector and the first thing we did was replace nearly 476 conventional looms, with 192 Ruti-C looms. We replaced the rest of the 280 looms slowly with 32 picanol airjet looms.

“This ensured that we could upgrade and improve quality of our products and also produce wider width fabrics, which all in turn meant, better price realizations. We also shifted from producing printing fabrics and started piece dyed fabrics. During this period, we also automated our spinning and printing facilities. All these initiatives, helped churn out good quality products as well as reduce costs.

“In 1987, we conceived and started the denim fabric project and switched over a part of the production capacity to produce the yarn and fabric for denims. Initially we started off with a capacity of 5,000 meters per day, which was later on doubled to 10,000 meters per day.

“In 1994, we set up a spanking new cotton yarn production plant with the latest technology with a capacity of 30,000 spindles in Baramati – Maharashtra. Currently we have a denim fabric production capacity of 14 million meters per year, which will go up to 24 million meters in April 2013. We also have a garment production plant which converts the denim fabrics in to clothing products which are supplied to reputed apparel brands in India.

Alongside in the last two decades we have revisited our product portfolio several times to keep up with the trends in the market. Today we produce fabrics of widths not less than 60 inches. We are also now a 100 percent cotton mill, while in earlier times, we used to run both polyester and cotton lines or a blend of both. We discarded polyester considering that fibre does not suit the Indian climate.

“Now we produce only fine counts and source from outside the yarn required to produce denim fabrics. Soma Textiles has been able to survive the various downtrends due to timely modernization programs and changing the product mixes and product development at appropriate times, while at the same time keeping a tight leash on costs, he winded up this very interesting chat by saying.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

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