India needs to improve the quality of its fabric offering as contamination of viscose and polyester in cotton has affected the textile market in the international and domestic markets.
Though few companies have a strong focus on quality, there are textile companies that were forced to blend viscose and polyester in cotton yarn to keep prices in control as last year it was facing all-time high cotton prices and the shortage of availability of cotton.
It is worth mentioning here that India’s textile exports decreased by 23 per cent in last financial year.
Bharat Chhajer, former chairman, Powerloom Development and Export Promotion Council (PDEXCIL) believes that last year due to shortage and high prices of cotton at Rs 1.10 lakh per candy, there were some quality issues also. Fabric dyeing and printing quality were reduced because Ahmedabad is a cotton textile processing hub. In some cases, the blended part of the fabric was left without dyeing and printing. This has continued this year also when average cotton prices decreased to Rs 60,000 per candy.
Similar is the view of Naresh Sharma, former vice president of Ahmedabad Textile Processors’ Association (ATPA).
As per him, the industry has seen a number of grey fabric processing orders of inferior quality. Fabric having contamination does not get dyed or printed as per expectation and such a situation may create issues between fabric suppliers and the processors.
It has been said that the last year, most spinning mills started blending to remain viable while this year, spinning mills are not blending viscose or polyester but there is contamination coming from hand picking of cotton crop and from ginning.
New spinning mills have machinery which removes contamination but old ginning and spinning units do not have such machinery.
