Most of the garment manufacturers today, are either improving their existing set-ups or going in for new state-of-the-art manufacturing units to remain a preferred supplier. Chittagong based Jerkin Group, is one among the pioneers which has chosen to go in for massive expansion to manufacture denim bottoms. Its new upcoming plant in Nasirabad, Atlantic Jeans, is scheduled to be commissioned in October. The fully automated unit is spread out in an area of 76,000 sq. feet with four floors, three dedicated to sewing with total 30 lines of 65 machines per line. “We are installing Brother, Pegasus and Kansai sewing machines. We will keep one floor out of the total four for cutting and storage of finished garments,” informs Azizul Islam Khan, Managing Director, Jerkin Group who started his journey as garment manufacturer in 1995 with just 100 machines.
While going for expansion, the company is simultaneously also working towards enhancing productivity in other units to overcome the increased wages and production costs. In this effort the company has not shied away from making investments though the cost of investments is now three times more than it was five years ago as also the bank interest has increased substantially over these past few years. The Jerkin Group has imported and installed new motors to save on energy cost, bought automated machines and single needle lockstitch machines with underbed trimmers for enhanced productivity using less labour. “With these investments, productivity can be increased by at least 10% while also saving on energy to maintain the profitability in business,” avers Azizul. By installing automated machines, the company is also saving on wages as a good number of helpers have been reduced.
“In basic bottoms we can go up to 4 lakh pieces, but if it is a critical product with many pockets, then the number would be half. Normally in 8 hours, we are able to produce 800 pieces on one line. In jackets, we do only 300 pieces in 8 hours on one line.”
“China and India are emerging as big markets for Bangladesh. One-third of world’s total population live in these two countries. One of my French buyers is now opening 800 stores in China and I am going to ship garments from here to China.”
Besides the above measures, the company has also strengthened its industrial engineering for its jacket division, which it has recently restarted because of shifting of jacket business from China. “We are now reviving our jacket production for the Turkish market for a buyer called LCYKK and though it is a low productivity garment, it is high on value,” shares Azizul. Since there are many operations in making one jacket, it involves a lot of time and workforce and is equivalent to producing 15 pieces of bottoms. Also a jacket line has to be more spacious. “If we can achieve better productivity in jackets it is a more lucrative option than bottoms,” avers Azizul. The IE does the line planning and also per piece efficiency of the workers by improving methods and fixing the targets on hourly basis. “So far we have not given any productivity-related incentives to the workers as we don’t have big volumes in jackets and also there are multiple styles in jackets so it is difficult to measure the efficiency levels. One line does the basic jacket, say around 1,000 pieces; the other line has more critical operations in jackets, so they will produce 400 pieces,” explains Azizul.
Moving with the time, Jerkin has installed fire extinguishers and sprinklers on all the floors along with fire doors. “We have also imported automatic fire alarm systems which is going to be installed very soon,” informs Azizul who prefers working with the American buyers that give large quantity orders, a few of which are Calvin Klein, Leecosco, Rokawear, Nautica and the likes. “The quantities offered by European buyers are small and on top of that they negotiate hard on price. With production costs going up, due to ever increase in wages, we did try working with M&S and Tesco but because we got very low CM rates, we stopped working with them,” shares Azizul.
The company is looking at tripling its turnover by next FY from US $ 12 million with production starting in its upcoming unit. “I am open to the idea of getting into an absolutely new product category and very soon my younger son who is doing his mechanical engineering from abroad would join my business, which will be the jumping board to explore more opportunities,” excitingly shares Azizul.
