SRF as a global entity has business operations in India, Thailand and South Africa. Apart from the technical textiles business, in which it enjoys a global leadership position, SRF is a domestic leader in refrigerants, engineering plastics and industrial yarns as well. The company also enjoys a significant presence among the key domestic manufacturers of polyester films and specialty chemicals. Building on its in-house R&D facilities for chemicals and technical textiles business, the company strives to stay ahead through innovations in operations and product development.
The company’s Technical Textiles Research & Development Centre located at Manali in Tamil Nadu is a premier institution, leading the industry through continuous improvements in technology and processes for futuristic products. The research centre is equipped with world-class infrastructure and pilot facility for polymerisation, spinning, twisting, dipping and coating for new product and process developments. The centre also offers joint product and process development with customers, providing them with customised products to suit their specific requirements. SRF’s product basket for technical textiles contains nylon tyrecord, polyester tyrecord, belting fabrics, coated and laminated fabrics, fishnet twines and industrial yarns.
Tyrecord reinforcement
SRF tyrecord fabrics are used as reinforcement for all categories of tyres, be it cycle, passenger car, light commercial vehicles, heavy commercial vehicles, tractor and off-the-road (OTR) tyres. It has the entire range of textile reinforcement including wicking and non-wicking chafer for heavy-duty tyres and tubeless radial tyres. SRF is a pioneer in manufacturing nylon 6 tyrecord and polyester tyrecord for all kinds and categories of automotive tyres.
The company supplies tyrecord fabrics to all major tyre companies in India and abroad. The company boasts of having state-of-the-art technology from the world famous Toray Industries for manufacturing High Modulous Low Shrinkage (HMLS) polyester yarn for tyrecord fabric. It has four tyrecord fabric plants in India and one in Thailand. The Indian plants are located at Manali (Tamil Nadu), Malanpur (Madhya Pradesh), Gummidipoondi and Viralimali (Tamil Nadu).
Three of SRF plants have fully integrated facilities from polymerization to dipped fabric and one from polymerization to greige fabric.
SRF’s belting fabrics plants are located in Viralimalai and Port Elizabeth (South Africa) from where the company produces and exports world-class belting fabrics to over 20 countries in Europe, Asia, the US and Latin America. The production facility for laminated fabrics is located at Kashipur (Uttarakhand) with state-of-art facilities.
Says Mr. Arun Bharat Ram, SRF Chairman: “Regarding TTB, we feel that the demand for nylon tyrecord fabrics (NTCF), our largest business will continue despite radialisation of medium and heavy commercial vehicles. We believe that the growth in demand for NTCF will essentially be driven by growth in the two-wheeler and off-the-road vehicle segments. The polyester tyrecord fabrics (PTCF) business, however, continues to struggle due to global surplus and low margins in the domestic market. Our belting fabrics business performed satisfactorily in this fiscal. We believe that the demand for belting fabrics would further improve once the mining and manufacturing sectors begin to grow. We are quite excited about the opportunities that exist in the field of coated and laminated fabrics”.
Product performance
Two of the new products developed by SRF’s R&D in the coated fabric segment have been commercialised during the year. In addition to this a new polyester fabric for reinforcement application in cycle tyres has been developed by the research department and commercialised during the year. With a rise in the transport sector, the company believes there are better prospects for its tarpaulin business.
The laminated fabrics business saw the entry of several new players during the year. This led to significant margin erosion in a highly competitive industry. Being a cyclical business one can expect to see a more rational approach with regards to the market dynamics. It is likely that this segment would pick up in the second half of 2014-15. Its industrial yarn segment has also been showing stable growth in the current fiscal.
The lackluster status of the Indian economy has had its effect, though limited, on the Technical Textiles Business (TTB) since several of the sectors that the business serves saw low growth and in some cases de-growth. Nevertheless, in spite of such circumstances, the business performed reasonably with revenues growing by eight per cent approximately over the previous year and the profitability improving by double digits.
The net sales of the company have shown a marginal increase of 2.69 per cent from Rs. 3,312.77 crores in 2012-13 to Rs. 3,402.10 crores in 2013-14.