Since its inception, F&A, Bangalore has created a niche with quality exhibitors and focused visitors. This year’s edition of the show had many new participants – a mix bag of medium and small players in fabrics, accessories and home furnishings. In fabrics, majority of the players exhibited their ladies fashion wear fabrics with some companies displaying men’s shirting and suiting fabrics. Prints, voiles, georgettes, chiffons, viscose, cotton/cotton blends, linen, linen blends, fine knits with new finishes were on display; however, Denim segment was missing. The companies were showcasing S/S’15 developments with Mumbai and Surat dominating the show in fabrics. In accessories, there were small- to medium-sized players, both Indian and foreign players, predominantly from China and Taiwan.
Polyester in Solids & Prints from Surat
Rasik Vatika showcases variety in Solids & Prints Known for its prints, chiffons, georgettes, crepes, satins, spuns, viscose, cotton blends, Surat based Rasik Vatika showcased its latest collection of polyester fabrics in solids and prints. The company for the first time displayed its ladies fashion garments at F&A. “We entered into garmenting 6 months back on the insistence of brands who are buying fabric from us. We do western wear and a few kurtis etc., and everything is manufactured from polyester which we produce and that is the basic agenda for our garmenting. We are among the few garment manufacturers in this region, as most of the garment manufacturers are based in Delhi-NCR for women’s wear and they prefer doing FOB orders,” shares Vaibhav Arora, irector.
Niharika Creations… Digital Prints on Sequined Polyester Fabrics
Known for its value additions on its fabrics like flocking, embossing, plaiting and digital printing, both direct digital and sublimation, the highlight for Niharika Creations at the fair was digital printing on sequined fabric. “It’s a unique product and no one is doing it right now. Currently we are supplying this fabric to Otto AGN and it is also being demanded by a lot of designers and boutiques. The price of this fabric is Rs. 350 per metre,” informs Siddharth Bachhawat, the young entrepreneur who also shared that he does direct digital printing on all kinds of fabrics including cottons, viscose, pure silk, nylon, while sublimation is done only on polyester.
The company presently has 8 digital printing machines with eight heads; 2 schiffli machines and 12 multi head machines. Apart from this the company does dyeing and printing work, which it outsources from Oeko-Tex certified process houses and supplies fabric to European buyers, like Zara, H&M, Next, and the likes. “We recently started manufacturing stoles as well made with Rayon and viscose and sent our first consignment to some US buyers,” avers Siddharth.
Bhavin Textiles displays Polyester Digital Prints
Participating for the first time at F&A, Bhavin Textiles showcased its polyester fabrics both in rotary and digital printing. “We are mainly into selling dyes which was started in 1970 and then entered into printing and dyeing in 1994. Since last two years we are in digital printing business for both polyesters and cotton,” shares Bhavesh R. Kabutarwala, Director of the company. Catering to garment exporters and domestic brands like Prateek Apparels, Wills Lifestyle, Kanua Fashions, the company is also exporting its fabrics to Malaysia, Dubai and European countries. The company has 3 digital printers, 19 flat belt and two rotary printers with a production capacity 3 lakh metres per day. Now the company is looking at going for dyeing suiting and shirting fabrics.
Shirting Fabrics DMI shows exclusive Indigo Dyed in Knitted Fabrics
DMI showcased its linens, light weight jerseys, indigo dyed and loose knitted fabrics which is in great demand nowadays. “In woven fabrics we were doing indigo dyed but in knitted fabrics it is a new concept. Response has been good. We met our regular customers. We are promoting Texchange from here and everyone was asking about it, the concept behind it,” states Shailesh Nayak, representing the company.
Bangalore has been an important market for DMI since last many years. The company is feeding the city with its linen and other woven fabrics for shirting and bottom weights with lot of new type of finishes and knitted fabrics. “We have developed performance fleeces in which we have inserted filament in the fabric which gives properties like low shrinkage in the fabric and it is more stable than normal knitted fabric,” shares Shailesh.
JCT shows its Indigo Dyed & Optics Range
JCT launched its Indigo Dyed (Blue Zone) and Pure White (Optics) collection at the show, which fetched a lot of visitor’s attention. “We are getting very good response for our indigo dyed “Blue Zone” products, which are dyed with green technology. We have started at a humble capacity and I think we shall touch a million metre per month very soon,” shared Rohit Kumar Mahajan, Manager (Marketing). We can play with this indigo fabric a lot, we can do cross colours, multiple colours, face/back different colours, it has more design elements in it. Our Optics, which is a 100% cotton white fabric made for high-end white shirting, starts from 40s to 100 counts and 2/120 counts, is priced very competitive and is also getting very good response.
Product innovation and development is a continuous focus in JCT to meet the requirement of our wide range of customers in various segments. The company has recently planned to go for expansion. Dealing both in cotton and synthetic fabrics, JCT produces shirting, suiting and bottom weight fabrics. We have put up state-of-the-art synthetic plant in which we manufacture 100% polyester and nylon fabrics and here we can do various types of coatings like water repellent, glossy, PU, rubber acrylic to name a few on cotton as well as synthetic fabrics. Latest addition to our technical portfolio is our innovative Technical Textile Division, under which we market our technical fabrics such as IFR, FR, antistatic and other performance fabrics. We have just launched JCT Homes our Bed and Bath collection.
Targeting to touch over Rs. 700 crore in the coming FY, JCT is also into the garmenting business. With a 200 sewing machine setup, the company initially started stitching garments for its own brand “TYROCK” but now it has started taking FOB orders also. “If we see good prospects then definitely we shall expand capacity of our stitching lines,” informs Rohit.
Damodar showcases its Natural Fabrics
Showing its S/S’15 developments using natural fibres such as modals, linens, excel linens, neps, colour neps and cotton rich blends, Damodar Creative Fabrics was a major draw at the F&A. “We are participating for the third time; we keep giving break in-between and this time we are participating because of the location. The unorganized sector in Bangalore is very big and also most of the buying offices are either in Delhi or Bangalore,” shares Aman Biyani, CEO – Fabric Division, as per whom new buyers are always welcome.
Talking about the strength of his company, Aman adds, “We have a very strong R&D team which creates new developments in fancy yarns and fabrics that are customized as per the buyers taste. We are very strong in linen and linen blended products so anything and everything with 100% linen is our forte.” A listed company, Damodar is a composite mill from spinning, weaving to yarn dyeing facility. With 1,05,000 spindles, the company is also outsourcing spinning to meet its demand both for in-house consumption and exports to 40 odd countries. The fabric capacity is about half a million metres per month.
The company has recently expanded its spinning capacities and is now looking forward to expanding its weaving capacities and yarn dyeing. “The general perception is that the value added fabric takes more time to manufacture but it’s not true; we are shooting deliveries in 60 days, be it a small order or a big order; it doesn’t matter because small order would eventually convert into a big order, so we are very happy to do that,” highlights Aman who also informed that his company touched Rs. 850 crore turnover this year and is looking at touching Rs, 1,000 crore by next year.
Nirvan attracts with its Linen & Linen Blends
Mumbai based Nirvan Silk Mills exhibited its 100% linen and linen blends like cotton linen, linen-excel. “We are participating for the first time so we are exhibiting our entire product range for S/S’15. We do yarn dyed and solid shirting fabrics and play with lots of weaves, structures, value addition in terms of designing even in the solids,” states Kapal Mehta, Director of the company.
With its manufacturing facilities at MIDC, Tarapore, the company installed 96 new air-jet and rapier looms with best of humidification plant as cotton need moisture for flawless fabric in 2008-09. “We installed best preparatory machines for warping, sizing, etc. All the technology was bought from Switzerland and now we are in process of putting up yarn dyed plant too in the same premises. The present production capacity of yarn dyed is 1.5 million metres per month and by 2015 March, we will enhance it to 2 million metres per month,” informs Kapal.
Catering to most of the leading brands, garment exporters (like Orient Craft, Gokaldas and the likes), and buying offices, the company also sells through traders who cater to mid-size and small brands. “We are in process of getting ourselves nominated as we feel that till now our bottleneck was yarn dyeing and fabric processing and now that it is going to get over, we are a complete package. For fabric processing we have bought a
land of 14 acres near Ahmedabad and by the end of 2015-16 we would be able to commission that too,” adds Kapal as per whom the company achieved a turnover of Rs. 170 crore last year and with all expansion in 2015, it shall touch Rs. 250 crore in the
coming financial.
Savla Polycott exhibits Yarn Dyed Fabrics
Mumbai based Savla Polycott showcased its shirting fabrics, which it is supplying to Indian brands like Peter England, ITC, Shopper’s Stop, Max and Lifestyle. The company specializes in yarn dyed polyester; PCs along with 100% cotton fabrics and linen. “Usually we do programmed orders for these brands and exporters. This is the third time we are participating and as compared to last two times the response is average,” shared Himanshu Savla. The present weaving capacity of the company is about 1 million metres per month and now it is looking at putting up a yarn dyeing unit. With an annual turnover of Rs. 30 crore, the company is exporting its fabrics to Middle East and South Asian countries and plans to increase its direct exports of fabrics.
Innovative Yarn Displays Texperts launches its Linocel brand
Representing flax yarn Giant of China, Kingdom Holding in India, Texperts India in collaboration with the company has come up with a blended yarn which is made of linen fibre and Lyocel fibre in a blend ratio of 60:40, 50:50 and 40:60. Manish Mehta, Director of the company shares, “Our tag line for this product is “Linen gets intimate with Lyocel”. We are a supply chain management company and we don’t have any manufacturing facility but still we have registered this brand and we are licensing the vendors for which we are not charging anything. We are giving them the fibres, technology, production plan; we are marketing their yarn and we are giving their yarns to the vendors and marketing their fabrics both knitted and woven in the domestic market as well as the international market.”
The conception, production, development and finally marketing of the product at both the yarn and fabric level is done through Texperts. “We control this fibre though it’s produced by our Principal’s Kingdom Holding from China. They have put up a facility near Shanghai where they produce the virgin Flax fibre and all technical parameters for spinning the yarn is set by us,” informs Manish, according to whom Texperts team engineered this yarn about 1½ years back but now they have branded it after seeing its great demand both in the international and domestic market. “Pure linen is not so user-friendly and is not so much liked by women for themselves and their kids because of linen’s harshness. So Linocel is the answer to this segment of consumers as it looks 100% like linen but because it’s blended with Lyocel, it has very soft hand feel,” adds Manish.
Linocel is the product for those who want to manufacture linen knits. “Knitted linen was innovated in Portugal about 7 years back but linen knitting is very difficult so when we launched this product our first buyer was Zara; our vendors sold around 165 metric tonnes of fabric converted into garments to Zara. We are now marketing this yarn/fabric to Next, M&S, H&M, Hirdaramani of Sri Lanka and some vendors in Bangladesh too are promoting this fabric,” says Manish as per whom a 21 count pure linen yarn (commonly used count for shirt weight) is for Rs. 1,100 per kg and Linocel is for Rs. 500 per kg.
Polygenta displays its Polyester Filament Yarns made with PET Bottles
Nasik based Polygenta Technologies Limited, showcased its polyester filament yarn made with recycled PET bottles. Polygenta uses patented chemical recycling process called “ReNew” at its integrated plant in Nasik. The present capacity of the plant is 10,000 MT per annum and plans are underway for further expansion. “We have already started providing our yarns to many premium customers globally and some major sportswear brands have approved our products for various applications,” shares Makrand Kulkarni, GM Sales & Marketing as per whom ReNew’s superior and unique filtration system yields a high purity polymer comparable to virgin polyester plants, free from the contamination associated with its waste feedstock.
The company’s products are backed by the “Global Recycling Standard” certification from Control Union, Oeko-Tex, ISO 9001 2008, and ISO 14001 2004. “Our yarn is available in a wide denier range starting (50 denier to 600 denier), with micro-denier products such as 75/72 LIM, 75/108 LIM, 150/144 LIM being an integral part of our product range. We have also introduced recently a 75/72 Full Dull product,” adds Kulkarni.
Accessories Union Knoff shows its new “Lotus Collection”
Union Knoff (HK) Ltd. showcased its new collection in buttons called Lotus Collection which is targeted at the lower priced market. The company’s lower priced collections are manufactured in Asia whereas the high-end products are being manufactured in Europe. “The Indian market is very price-sensitive whereas in China, more the price of a button, better it is, so we thought of launching some additional ranges which may fit into the budget of the Indian brands,” avers Eberhard Ganns, Managing Director of the company.
Eberhard claims that majority of the company’s products are high-tech items which undergo about 20 production steps. It can be done in Asia or Europe depending on the minimum quantities and availability of raw materials. “We are happy with our growth in the Indian market. We are substantially ahead from our business plan; it’s kind of snowball effect, the more companies buy from us, the more we get known to the market. Our growth in India has been more than 200% per year. It’s almost 800% to what we were three years ago. Today, most of the western brands have nominated us and business through nomination is steady business,” mentions Eberhard .
Elegant India attracts a lot of attention for Shell Buttons
It was the second time Elegant participated at F&A and fetched phenomenal response from companies like Gokaldas and Arvind, to mention the prominent ones. “They are buying a lot of shell buttons from us. Arvind makes shirts in the range of Rs. 2,000-2,500 and we have buttons for this kind of range. We have laser technology which can emboss the logos on buttons, so we are doing branding on the buttons these days,” informs Alok Raj, Director of the company.
The focus of the display was buttons for formal shirts as Bangalore is the hub for formal shirts. “We specialize in shell buttons; we make only the natural buttons and per month capacity is 2 to 2.5 lakh gross of buttons. We also make high-end buttons for our European customers, per month capacity of which is 10,000 to 12,000 gross and the value for the same is more than one lakh US dollars,” shares Alok.
Orchid displays its Crochet & other Laces
Fetching good response for its varied types of laces, Orchid Industries exhibited its schiffli embroidered fabrics, chemical fabrics, chemical laces and crochet laces. “We are world’s largest manufacturers of crochet laces and we do job work for garment exporters pan India. We do exports directly as well and have an office in Mexico,” claims Amar Baid, Director of the company.
With a turnover of Rs. 60 crore, the company makes laces and embroidery as per buyer’s specifications and as well as creates its own designs. “We have more than 50,000 designs in our library,” proudly shares Amar and adds, “In export market people prefer more of white and ivory laces. We generally supply greige products to the garment exporters and they get it dyed at their end. But when it comes to crochet or laces we do dyed yarn production. In crochet laces we can compete with China or any other country in quality, price and delivery time. We can ship out one container every day,” informs Amar.
Apparel Concepts exhibits solutions for Denim
Dealing in all kinds of garment trims and accessories, the company showcased its solutions for denim at F&A. The company deals in all kinds of buttons such as metal buttons, shang buttons, polyester buttons, wood buttons, coconut buttons. “We import shangs from China, polyester we make in India, coconut buttons we manufacture in Gujarat and in South. We got very good enquiries from companies like Madura Garments,” shared Dilip Jain, representing the company.
Swiss Ribbons shows its unique designs in Laces & Ribbons
Surat based Swiss Ribbons, manufacturers of laces, trimmings, ribbons, tassels, cords, garments accessories and embroidery fabrics showed its latest developments in laces and ribbons. “We are a one-stop shop for all narrow width garment accessories. We are able to provide our valued customer with trend setting designs and concepts using the latest manufacturing techniques available in the world and strongly believe in customization,” states Vasim Ansari, representing the company.
