DRIVING TEXTILE DECARBONISATION
Forbes Marshall has been a long-standing partner to the textile industry, supporting mills in improving steam efficiency, process efficiency, and energy performance across sizing, dyeing, and finishing operations. With eight decades of engineering expertise, the company has evolved from a steam equipment supplier to a provider of integrated, application-focused solutions that combine steam engineering, process control, and digital performance management to deliver measurable and sustained efficiency gains.
In this interview, Vaibhav Pradhan, General Manager, Steam Systems Division, Forbes Marshall, shares with Fibre2Fashion how the company is helping textile manufacturers reduce fuel consumption, improve uptime, optimise water and energy use, and progress towards decarbonisation. He also discusses the role of digital platforms, global best practices, and collaborative approaches in enabling mills to meet rising cost, sustainability, and ESG compliance pressures.
Forbes Marshall has been closely associated with the textile industry since its early trading days in steam equipment. How has the company’s approach to textile sector energy solutions evolved in recent years?
Forbes Marshall's journey began in 1946. According to our founder, the late Darius Forbes, “We were always conscious that we were selling more than mere equipment. We were selling increased production, improved product quality, production at a lower cost and quite often a combination of all three.”
We have worked hard to ensure that this approach remains the core of our business. This has enabled us to evolve from solely supplying individual steam system equipment to offering integrated, application-focused solutions, built on complementary expertise in steam engineering and process control. In recent years, the focus has shifted towards improving and sustaining the benefits/ KPIs such as Steam to Fuel (S:F) ratio, Condensate Recovery Factor (CRF), Specific Steam Consumption (SSC), and Specific Water Consumption (SWC) using interactive digital platform to identify the gaps and bridge it through ongoing service engagement.
Your solutions claim a 20–24 per cent reduction in boiler fuel consumption for textile manufacturers. What technologies or design principles enable such improvements, and what typical payback periods do textile clients see?
Our tacit knowledge helps us to understand the energy intensity for the various textile processes. We work closely with the textile mills to understand their operating practices, maintenance procedures and capture the operating parameters to identify areas of improvement in the steam and condensate network.
The claimed 20–24 per cent reduction in the boiler fuel bill is enabled by an integrated approach that targets all possible areas of energy waste:
- Maximise Boiler Efficiency: Implementing advanced boiler controls, optimising the steam-to-fuel ratio, and incorporating Waste Heat Recovery (WHR) equipment and/or steam accumulators to meet surge steam demand.
- Minimise Distribution Losses: Correctly engineered steam distribution network to minimise losses with best-in-class moisture separators and compact main line steam trapping solutions with 95 per cent plus uptime; and automatic air vents to enhance steam quality.
- Optimise Process Consumption: Precise pressure reduction with indicative steam flow rate for enhancing energy input at the block level. Precise temperature control at an optimal pressure with indicative steam flow rate for maximising the Specific Steam Consumption (SSC) at an equipment level. Application specific steam trapping solution to ensure efficient condensate evacuation such as: Two Orifice Float Trap to address the peak start up and normal running load at an equipment level, Garment Trap for steam irons in the garment industry, Multi Utility Process Trap for segregation and recovery of pure condensate from multi-utility applications such as dyeing machines.
- Maximise Condensate Recovery Factor and Feed Water Temperature: Ensuring complete recovery of heat from flash steam and recovery of condensate at higher temperature (100+ degree C) using steam operated FlashJet Pump.
- Dye Liquor Heat Recovery Systems: Customized Dye Liquor Heat Recovery systems with choke free operation and optimum heat transfer coefficient focused on impacting heat recovery and discharge of effluent at lower temperature to meet compliance requirements.
Uptime is critical for mills with continuous dyeing and finishing lines. How do your digital monitoring and control platforms sustain equipment uptime at more than 95 per cent?
Since 2015, Forbes Marshall has focused on the installed base of steam products and solutions in the process industries to capture the uptime performance and worked towards ensuring that the uptime improves and sustains to levels of 95 per cent plus by using the Steam System Score Card. This plant specific data is captured on the digital platform ensuring visibility to equipment uptime. This uptime can be sustained at more than 95 per cent by enabling predictive and proactive maintenance inputs, instead of reactive fixes in a running plant.
- Real-Time Diagnostics: The system continuously monitors critical parameters such as boiler efficiency, Steam to Fuel Ratio, Specific Steam Consumption, Condensate Recovery Factor, boiler feed water temperature and thereby understands the gaps, if any.
- Early Warning: It detects subtle performance drifts or anomalies related to issues like steam starvation, poor steam quality, or condensate pump choking (often due to pipeline scaling), allowing the mill maintenance personnel or Forbes Marshall team to intervene.
- Sustained Discipline: Provides data-driven insights to operators, helping them maintain operational discipline and take timely corrective action.
Textile dye houses often struggle with CO2 reduction due to dependency on thermal energy. How is Forbes Marshall enabling clients to decarbonise without compromising productivity or fabric quality?
Forbes Marshall enables decarbonisation by focusing on radical reduction in energy intensity by improving plant efficiency and also with focus on fuel flexibility.
- Reduced Demand: The primary focus for Forbes Marshall is to reduce the required thermal energy by 20–25 per cent through efficiency improvement, meaning less fuel is being consumed for the same production output. This parameter of Specific Fuel Consumption helps to benchmark the energy utilised per unit of production. It helps to define the best, average and worst managed plants thereby providing insights to understand and improve the energy intensity. Forbes Marshall is presently focusing on the area of direct steam using equipment that lead to adverse impact on steam loading of the boiler thereby leading to increased fuel consumption.
- Fuel Transition: Forbes Marshall has been proactive in correct sizing and selection of boilers with biomass as a fuel, that allows textile plants to switch to carbon neutral fuels without sacrificing stable pressure output or operational safety. Forbes Marshall offers Dynamic Step Grate (DSG) boilers in smaller capacities and Dynamically Air-Cooled Step Grate (DAS) technology for bigger capacities of Energy Plants using biomass fuels.
- Quantifiable Impact: Globally, Forbes Marshall customers collectively achieve a reduction of around 2 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, proving that high productivity and quality can be maintained while aggressively decarbonising.
Forbes Marshall operates globally with teams across Asia, Europe, and the Americas. How do insights from international sites influence your engineering solutions for Indian textile clusters such as Surat, Tiruppur, or Ludhiana?
The Process Energy Group at Forbes Marshall captures the understanding of the performance parameters of the textile plants operating in India as well as internationally. These parameters help to understand that most customers are struggling with the same challenges and pain points. There are certain additional challenges due to SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) and ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) compliance requirements, as companies work to meet the standards and demands set by their end buyers.
Forbes Marshall takes pride in being a multinational with Indian roots. Global operations and insights ensure that solutions offered are world-class and benchmarked against international best practices.
- Proven Technology: Technologies developed in India have been successfully implemented in markets like Bangladesh, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Egypt and the expectations of the global players have helped world class manufacturing practices to be adopted, bringing a cutting edge to plants operating in India, making them future ready.
- Addressing Local Challenges: Global experience enables design solutions to tackle the acute water-related challenges (e.g., high hardness and TDS) common in Indian clusters, which can lead to rapid fouling and equipment damage.
- Benchmarking: International insights help Indian textile plants to understand how their plant efficiency (e.g., SSC or CRF) compares to the global best, providing a clear roadmap for investment.
With rising energy costs and stricter environmental mandates, where do you see the textile industry focusing its next major sustainability investments—fuel transition, automation, or water-energy optimisation?
The industry is currently focused on integrated Water-Energy Optimisation enabled by Digital Automation. Simultaneously, there is a drive towards technology adaptation to use biomass as fuel for steam generation.
- While fuel transition (decarbonisation) is a key strategic goal, the most immediate and cost-effective investments are in optimising the efficiency of existing energy and water systems.
- Digital automation is essential because it provides the measurable, auditable, and sustained results required to satisfy both internal cost-saving targets and external buyer mandates for sustainability.
What role will collaboration between technology providers, brands, and textile mills play in accelerating decarbonisation and resource efficiency?
Collaboration is the critical engine for acceleration:
- Brands/Buyers set ambitious, non-negotiable sustainability mandates (e.g., net-zero goals), creating the demand signal.
- Technology Providers (like Forbes Marshall) provide the integrated approach through proven solutions and ongoing services engagement that allow mills to reliably meet these mandates.
- Textile Mills provide the commitment and operational platform for implementation. This collaboration validates the investment risk for the mill and ensures the brand’s targets are met with verifiable data.
From a cost-sustainability balance perspective, what practical advice would you offer textile manufacturers beginning their energy transformation journey?
The most practical advice is to start with diagnostics and engage in sustaining the savings digitally:
- Conduct a Comprehensive Audit: Do not start with equipment purchases. First, understand the total thermal and water loss through a detailed audit to create a prioritised, high-ROI roadmap.
- Focus on immediate wins (Zero steam leak and Zero condensate drain): Prioritise maximising condensate recovery and arresting steam leakages. These actions have the shortest payback period and generate the capital needed for larger investments (e.g., switching to biomass as fuel).
- Digitalisation for Sustenance: Integrate real-time monitoring (FM Digital) with any major efficiency investment. The digital system ensures that the savings achieved on day one are not lost to operational lapses during the plant operations, guaranteeing the long-term cost-sustainability balance.
