The Textile Division of Sintex Industries, earlier known as Bharat Vijay Mills, was started by the Kedia family in 1904 and was taken over by the Patels in 1934. Having gone public the same year, it also has to its credit an interrupted record of paying dividends since then.
It remained a textile company till 1974 when it diversified into material handling plastic containers, specially for the textile sector, and today, Sintex is a name to reckon with and synonymous with water tanks, while also turning out a whole host of other plastic-related products.
Mr. Amit Patel, who shared the history and plans for investing Rs. 5,600 crores in a greenfield textile plant with The Textile Magazine, is of the third generation of the Patel family who has been involved in the business since 1986 and is also the Managing Director of the $1 billion Sintex Group based at Kalol near Ahmedabad.
Sintex also kept changing its product portfolio with changing times. It was among the first to produce polyester fabrics in India in the 1960s, the first to start making corduroy fabrics in 1976 and also the first to manufacture high-end yarn dyed men’s shirting in 1992. Till date, it continues to produce high-end shirting, with this product alone accounting for nearly 85 per cent of its current production.
Mr. Amit Patel reveals that although they are a vertically integrated manufacturer, he refers to the production capacity of the various processes at the Kalol plant as a ‘Reverse Pyramid’. They have a smaller capacity in spinning, larger for weaving and much larger for fabric processing. The higher capacities in weaving and processing are fed by yarns and fabrics purchased from outside, mainly those which they do not produce in-house.
Sintex produces multiple varieties of blended high-end shirting like cotton-linen, cotton-silk, cotton-lycra and cotton-linen-lycra. Alongside it also offers fabrics with surface finishes like peaching, razing, brushing, etc., to give it a different touch and feel through mechanical and also chemical processes.
In weaving, Sintex also offers shirting in warp and weft colours and has capability to do 12 colours in weft. It also produces jacquard fabrics in men’s shirting, which is also unique in the Indian textile market according to Amit Patel, and also produces double fabrics for jackets, etc.
According to him, they also add value to the fabric at the design creation stage, with an in-house design studio. Almost 50 per cent of the fabrics sold are with designs prepared by the in-house team. They come out with two collections every year. The team also designs fabrics meant for specific wears like beachwear, etc.
The Kalol plant has 24,000 spindles, most of which are compact and spin fine counts of up to 2x180s. Till the draw frame stage and also ring frame stage, the LMW technology has been adopted while compact spinning technology comes from Sussen. It has 348 looms, which are a mix of Rapier and Airjet, out of which nearly 300 looms have dobbies. The Rapier looms are from Picanol, and Airjets from Toyata. Additionally, there are 24 looms dedicated to product development.
In fabric processing, they have a capacity to produce two million metres of fabric per month. Depending on the season, the fabric processing capacity utilisation varies between 60 and 90 per cent. The entire wet processing system is from Goler, Germany, and dry processing from Bruckner and Monforts.
“In spinning technology,” explains Mr. Amit Patel, “spinning concepts have not changed since last 70 years, but technologies have changed a lot, especially compact spinning while using cotton fibre.”
Sintex is now setting up a new spinning plant with one million spindles at Pipavav, also in Gujarat, which is a cotton belt and is just six km from the recently set up Pipavav port. The plant, is being set up in three phases, will have 320,000 spindles in the first phase, a similar number in the second phase and 360,000 in the last phase. The third phase will also include weaving and knitting facilities.
The idea to set up the plant came with the announcement of the Gujarat Textile Policy and also from the changing dynamics in the Chinese textile industry around 15 months back. It has also achieved financial closure for the first two phases and is in the process of doing so for the third phase.
In the first phase, Sintex is investing around Rs. 1,550-1,600 crores, a similar amount in the second phase and around Rs. 2,200-2,400 crores in the final phase for a total of Rs. 5,600-5,800 crores in the next four years and will be the largest single place textile mill, housing one million spindles in India.
The first phase has been further bifurcated into three units with separate buildings for each of them wherein with just the cotton and finished products gowdowns being common, while each unit will have its own set of blowroom to winding machines. Installation of machines in the first unit began on March 6 and commercial production at the unit is expected to start by September 1.
The second unit is scheduled to begin commercial production by November and the third unit by January 2016. Also built is a state-of-art training centre, a modern workers village with all amenities like bachelors quarters and also quarters for families. A shopping centre, a sports field, an amphitheater, a small cinema hall and a large mess will be part of the village. At peak production, Sintex expects to employ around 4,000-5,000 people of both genders in the ratio of 50:50.
The 320,000 spindles in the first phase are all compact spinning and will only produce cotton yarn for knitting and weaving with counts ranging 24s to 80s. The second phase will manufacture polyester-cotton yarns, polyester-viscose yarns and cotton, both carded and combed yarn. This unit will also have 24,000 spindles exclusively to produce value-added blended yarns like cotton-silk, cotton-linen, linen yarns and lycra-core yarns.
The yarns produced in the third phase will be more or less exclusively used for the weaving and knitting machines which are being put up in the third phase. Yarns to be produced here will again be mainly blends like polyester-cotton, polyester-viscose and also 100 percent cotton.
At full capacity, the new Pipavav plant will be producing close to a massive 520 tons of yarn per day. To market the same, distribution centres will be set up across the globe. The biggest targeted export markets will be China, followed by Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Turkey, Greece, Portugal, Italy, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa, as well as Brazil, Argentina and North America.
In a few countries like China, Thailand and Turkey, Sintex is opening depots to offer quick service in smaller quantities to its customers.
“Sintex has done extensive global market research and approached nearly 200 customers in different countries prior to finalising the plant, and most have provided positive feedback regarding the latest technology that we are installing, high quality of yarns that will be produced and timely deliveries that we will offer,” Mr. Amit Patel informs. The FMCG style market research began with appointment of an international consultancy to provide them costing of eight countries which have a solid textile industry base.
The new plant is adopting the ‘No Touch’ policy beginning right from blowroom to packing, which means none of the workers, beginning from blowroom, will touch the cotton or yarn till it is packed. This is due to the completely automated technology adopted by Sintex.
According to Mr. Amit Patel, the target is to supply 100 per cent contamination-free cotton yarn, which is in demand in global markets, and to do this, they have invested heavily to install technology which will detect and remove contamination at each stage of the spinning process.
The yarn produced at the Pipavav plant will also be dyed in different colours at the Kalol plant, for which Sintex is expanding capacity at the Kalol plant. Amit Patel reveals that they will be dyeing the yarn at Kalol, since they already have the related infrastructure in place and will not need to invest in a separate yarn dyeing plant in Kalol. At the Pipavav plant, Sintex also plans to produce organic cotton yarns.
For blowroom and carding, Sintex has selected the Truetzschler technology, Rieter for draw frames and combers, speed frames are from Marzolli, for compact yarns, Sintex has again chosen Rieter and for ring frames, LMW technology is the choice of Sintex, while winding machines will be supplied by Murata.
To give optimum moisture to the finished yarns or also called specialised yarn finishing, Sintex is installing a technology, be introduced for the first time in India. This will help the packed yarn retain 6 per cent moisture and, in turn, provide the requisite strength and increase productivity at the warping, knitting or finishing stage. This latest technology, according to Mr. Amit Patel, will also reduce the time to provide the requisite moisture from somewhere around 100 hours to just six hours.
Mr. Patel has further disclosed that investment has been made in automation and ‘No Touch’ process to get higher productivity, reduce imperfections and acquire strength in yarn. He further informs that they are the first mill in India to implement the ‘No Touch’ process across all the production processes in spinning.
Offering contamination-free yarn will also mean that Sintex will able to attract a premium for the yarn that they sell as against comparable yarns, although, he admits that in the initial stages they may have to sell yarns at market rates, till the time, the customers fully understands the positives and experiences of using contamination-free yarn in their fabrics. Sintex also wants to create a brand out of the yarn that they market, rather than sell it as a commodity.
Sharing the advantages of contamination-free yarn, he says that the warper or weaver will be able to get more productivity as well as a better feel and look of the fabric. The weaver will get the positive feedback of using contamination-free yarn from the company processing the fabric, as the good properties of the processed fabric will show up at this stage.
Sintex has always followed good environment-friendly and green practices at the Kalol unit and will do so at the Pipavav unit too. At the Kalol plant, water is recycled and reused three times. At Pipavav, a zero-discharge effluent plant is being set up. As a result, the additional water, or also called top-up water, will be just 12 per cent on a daily basis, which is also due to atmospheric and humidification losses.
A rooftop solar plant at Pipavav is also under consideration, which will generate close to 9 MW electric energy and will be around 15 per cent of overall consumption at the plant. Also, four large bio-gas plants, which are produced by Sintex, will be set up. The gas will be used for create heat in certain processes.
The training centre is receiving its due attention at Pipavav, and it will be following international standards in training and will train the trainers.
According to Mr. Amit Patel, the machines are Programable Logic Controller (PLC)-based or touch screen-based and also in English. So, workers, both men and women, will have to be thoroughly trained on using these touch screen-based modern machines.
Sintex expects to market 20-30 per cent of its production in the Indian market, and will also be setting up three depots in the North, South and the East of the country. It will be going in for ISO certification soon.
On the ‘Make in India’ program of the Indian Government, he says India needs to catch up with China in terms of industrial development, and with costs rising in China; India can take advantage of low-value added industrial activity which is expected to move out of China.
According to Mr. Amit Patel, the services sector which is generating high employment opportunities is however limited to educated people and also restricted to 1,000 towns and cities across India. While, the ‘Make in India’ program has the potential to create jobs in rural areas and also for the uneducated section, it is no more possible or even affordable to set up a big industrial plant in towns and cities.