Francesco Gozio
Head of Marketing Department Marzoli
How would you describe the technologies used in spinning mills in India versus its contemporaries like China, Bangladesh or Pakistan?
I think Indian spinning mills are very concerned about latest and cutting edge technologies. The spinning industry entails very little margins. Hence it is important to produce great amounts of material and reduce costs to a minimum to underpin profitability.
Machines play a major role in this because cutting-edge, automated technology can reduce the three major cost drivers for a spinning mill: cotton, energy and labour. A recent accounting study on a real spinning mill demonstrates that on the total cost raw material weighs for 70 per cent, energy for 13 per cent, salary and wages for 7 per cent. Depreciation, the cost of the investment divided for the number of years of service life of the machine, on the other hand only weighs 3 per cent.
I think that the fierce international competition will force Indian spinners to upgrade their technical asset to reduce their production costs and remain among the leaders of the industry.
Do you think India has the potential to take over automation in terms of skilled man power and technical personnel?
So far not every spinner in India has adopted full automation. Automation entails lower labor costs but requires higher capital costs. Therefore spinning mills will adopt a higher degree of automation when the expected labour costs are higher than the increase in capital cost.
Thanks to the great effort of textile machinery manufacturers costs for automation have been decreasing sharply. Contemporarily Indian manpower will likely grow in competencies and skills and therefore will be employed in higher skilled jobs and earn higher wages and salaries.
It is therefore reasonable assuming that in the next few years a higher degree of automation will be adopted in Indian spinning mills.
Which other fairs do you plan to attend in 2017?
Marzoli is present at basically every textile machinery show around the world every year. In 2017, just to name a few shows we will attend, we will exhibit in KTM (Turkey), Technotextil (Brazil), Shanghaitex (China), Irantex (Iran) and many others.
How has demonetisation affected the business in the textile industry?
Demonetisation has definitely had some impact, but to be honest I think that there are other conditions that have been affecting the industry much more. For example, the cotton and yarn prices, imports from India to China, the high growth of competitor industries (e.g. Vietnam's), international trade agreements that are putting India in a disadvantageous position towards high consuming markets etc.
Will FTA with EU improve the potential of the textile industry?
A FTA would definitely be beneficial to both India and EU.
DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
