Orient Craft is among the very few apparel manufacturers who have transformed in the recent decade from just being a home-grown exporter to an organization with a corporate, responsible and professional structure. The Gurgaon-based apparel and home textile manufacturer has completed one of the 5 factories slated to come up at Bhiwadi, Rajasthan, and that too with a ‘Green Certification’. Spread out over a total area of 30 acres within the RIICO Industrial Area, OC is building on a vision of the future which is ‘Green’ and the LEED Certified Silver-rated Green factory is just the beginning of a journey that was initiated three years ago. Team StitchWorld visited the ‘Green Apparel Manufacturing Facility’ accompanied by Ranjiv Kapur, President, Orient Craft, the man on whose shoulder lies the responsibility to give shape to the vision of the CMD, Sudhir Dhingra…
With 19 apparel manufacturing facilities already operational in Delhi-NCR, the upfront management started planning for the future in 2009. Convinced that Green and responsible manufacturing is the future, the management set out a blue print of an integrated manufacturing complex where not only compliance norms were built into the structure, but the business was able to grow beyond compliance and beyond fashion. Earmarking Bhiwadi in Rajasthan which is an hour-and-a-half drive from the OC headquarters in Khandsa, Gurgaon, the location was near enough to be handled by the core team but far enough to generate fresh manpower.
After many discussions with the consultants and consistent working and reworking, the first factory was completed in December 2010 and attained the much sought-after Green Certification in May 2011. “The Green factory in Bhiwadi is not just a LEED certified apparel manufacturing facility, it represents the whole ‘Sustainable’ Corporation Orient Craft has transformed into, in the past decade,”says Ranjiv Kapur. He adds, “The philosophy of CSR, whether social or environmental is now embedded into our business model and it has helped that our buyers like M&S and Ann Taylor are also deeply rooted in sustainability.”
M&S with ‘Plan A’ in particular has been pushing its suppliers towards Green and they are very happy to see the factory up and running. “Going Green is the future and we want to make the right moves early so that when others are struggling to prove creditability, we are already well established and preferred suppliers,” reasons Ranjiv.
Germinating from an understanding of what important buyers want, what the world requires and the fact that going Green was beneficial to both the organization and the employees, Sudhir Dhingra committed to make an investment in a Green factory complex to be built in a phased manner. “We are proud that today we are the largest factory in India (more than 1 lakh square metres) to be certified as Green, satisfying all the norms that justify such a certification despite all the hurdles that we faced,” says Ranjiv. “The reason that we want to talk about it is because as an Indian we need to project our country as being progressive and ready for the future,” he adds.
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Achievements of ‘Green Journey’
- Saved energy cost by 24% by using solar energy, energy-efficient lighting and presence of a CFC/HCFC-free HVAC system.
- Captures more than 50% of the run-off rainwater and aims to achieve the mark of 95% in the near future.
- 100% fulfilment of landscape irrigation and flushing requirement by treated water from the in-house ETP and STP plants.
- 95.6% of waste generated during construction, was reused and recycled. 30% increase in in-house ventilation.
- The recycled content of all the construction materials accounted for 23% of the total construction material cost.
- 73% of the material used in the construction was sourced locally. [/bleft]
However, tracing the journey Ranjiv admits that it was not easy. “The first real hurdle was to understand the concept of Green,” he recalls. Despite general perception a Green factory does not mean a factory with lots of greenery; in fact, OC had to remove many of the plants as it was over the permissible limit. “We realized that more plants were in fact a burden on the water levels, as absorptions were higher. Further, the selection of the plants is important and they should be such which fit into the natural habitat and are local species,” says Ranjiv.
Similarly, Green is not only about the environment it also implies what facilities are given to workers for better working conditions. Crèche, ATM, medical room, canteens, special provisions for handicapped, transport facilities, clean work area, visible sign boards for safety measures are a few of the components that construe a green building. In fact, there was a lot of learning and unlearning and just getting things in place was not the challenge but to do it right was a bigger challenge.
Another, area which was a learning process was the standards themselves. “When we started we were given a checklist with precise details of what needs to be done. It was our choice to do as many as we could to increase our scorecard and get a good rating. But many times when the audits happened we were told that standards had been revised so we would not get points as per our expectation for what we had done. But we fought our case as we were never informed on the changes and in many areas our scores were increased, finally adding up to a silver rated certification,” avers Ranjiv.
OC was also vocal on why a general certification for being Green was being awarded, without clear mention of what was ‘Green’. “We questioned why a person making a small office green was treated at par with a huge complex like ours,” informs Ranjiv. The result was that now a rider comes with the certification clarifying what is ‘Green’ – Green Factory, Green Building, Green Office, etc.
The process was very demanding, but now that the systems are in place and there is better understanding of the requirements, Ranjiv feels that constructing the next five factories will be easier. “We have painstakingly learned the real meaning of Green and seeing the benefits that it has given us from a ‘savings’ point of view and as an image building exercise, we are confident that OC will be a leader in CSR for this industry, putting both the country and itself on the world map,” concludes an extremely proud Ranjiv.
