Moving with time is the only way to grow in today’s fast paced fashion industry. Tirupur, often referred to as the Manchester of the south and being the biggest cotton knitting textile hub in the country, is now foraying into manmade fibre apparels to combat the lean season which the fabric and garment manufacturers encounter in exports of knitted cotton garments. Though exports of garments from Tirupur in FY 2013-14 amounted to around Rs. 17,800 crore, industry stalwarts feel that the city has much more potential and if the hub can also include synthetic knits in its portfolio then there can be an increase of about 50% in the turnover. Team Apparel Online talked to several players in Tirupur to understand this development and how prepared the industry was for the same…
As of today, the share of synthetic fibre based knitwear in Tirupur is minimal and manmade fibre fabrics like warp knits are mostly imported. Undoubtedly, there is a market demand, both at the domestic and international level; however, product diversification coupled with cost-effectiveness is essential to compete in the international arena and cater to the high-end market, and for this technology benchmarking is the need of the hour. There are companies such as Eastman Exports, RBR Garments, Fashion Knits, Clifton Exports to name a few who have taken the plunge and are manufacturing synthetic knitted fabrics and apparels for sportswear and winter wear categories, but the same accounts for just about 15 to 20% of their total production and so there is still a long way to go.
The prime supporter and motivator of introducing synthetics in Tirupur is Dr. A. Sakthivel, President of Tirupur Exporters Association. “Since exports of cotton based apparels are season based, knitting machines lie idle for a few months in a year. So the foray into synthetic textiles will mean that knitters will be able to run their export units throughout the year,” he reasons. The process of inducting synthetic knits is already on. “We have already imported a knitting machine to knit synthetic fabrics at the AEPC-managed Knitwear Technology Mission (KTM) in Tirupur and currently we are making samples of polyester and nylon knitted fabrics,” informs Sakthivel according to whom synthetic knitted fabrics will not replace cotton, but will add a new dimension by running parallel to cotton knitted fabrics. “The potential for export of synthetic fabrics-made apparel is very huge as consumption of these apparels is higher compared to cotton made clothing in overseas markets,” he adds.
N. Chandran, Chairman & Managing Director, Eastman Exports also agreed that there is a subtle shift taking place towards synthetic products and there are many factors that have propelled the movement, the most prominent being the rising production cost in China which was predominantly exporting the synthetic knitted products to the international market. “In certain products China is now unable to compete with the global FOB prices. India can capture this business in a wider way, however the manmade fibre cost is very expensive as excise and import tariffs are high in India. If it gets reduced to zero duty then we can get bigger volumes and compete with China or Indonesia,” opines Chandran. Eastman Exports is a vertically integrated company producing fabrics and garments in 100% cotton, synthetic, blends and linen. The synthetic business contributes approximately 15% to the total production as of now.
Corroborating Chandran’s remark on high excise and import duties Ravi, Managing Partner of Fashion Knits, Tirupur states, “We are not able to achieve the quality of fabric which we are sourcing out of India as we do not have the quality raw material yarn from Indian mills and importing the raw material is very expensive.”
Many industry members feel that the dyeing issues in Tirupur brought in a lot of changes and the most evident was the outsourcing of processing needs and fabrics by the manufacturers. Majority of the factories went for their processing requirement to Ahmedabad, Surat, Panipat, Ludhiana and Delhi which are quite strong in manmade fibre and fabric along with cotton. “That period really helped the factories here to know the possibilities of doing garments in manmade fibres as traditionally Tirupur is known and good only in 100% cotton and the buyers too are interested in sourcing mainly summer products,” observes Manikandan G, President, Apparel Global Consulting, Tirupur, and according to whom majority of the processing facilities and garmenting units in Tirupur are experienced and trained only in cotton products.
The main manmade fibres coming into limelight (apart from usual polyester or cotton blended) are viscose, modal, bamboo and sportswear micro polyester either 100% or with cotton blend. “To my knowledge the ‘Tirupur made’ products being exported to European value chain and high-end market is now around 15-20% with manmade fibres. I believe sportswear production in Tirupur has also increased quite significantly. Every processing and knitting unit is now capable to handle this with some technical change even though we still lack on value addition processing to give true quality. It is difficult to identify a specific cluster or group of processing units who specialized in this since these are done mostly against demand and need,” concludes Manikandan. No doubt, the upfront entrepreneurs of Tripur are determined to add value to their product basket and efforts are under way.
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