Welspun plan to push ahead in home textiles and flooring solutions

Introduces Wel-Trak for end-to-end traceability

Welspun India Ltd. (WIL) will continue to leverage its scale to emerge as one of the world’s most efficient manufacturers of home textiles. In FY 2018, Welspun has expanded its towel capacity from 72,000 MT to 80,000 MT. It has also invested in  a new flooring facility during the year. The total capex for 2017-18 was around Rs. 7 billion.

Ms. Dipali Goenka, CEO & Joint Managing Director, Welspun India

Welspun is known as one of the most innovative companies in the home textile space, with a portfolio of 26 unique inventions across the globe, contributing 36% to its sales. The recent innovation ‘Hygrocotton’ has crossed the $200 million mark, contributing to approximately 20% of the total revenues.

Welspun’s next growth engine is flooring solutions wherein it is investing Rs. 6 billion over the two years. The products include area rugs, carpets, carpet tiles, accent rugs and wall to wall carpets. The capacity for Welspun flooring solutions project is about 7 million square metres and is expected to be completed by the second quarter of fiscal 2019.

Further, Welspun has invested Rs. 100 crores to set up a fresh state-of-the-art fully automated cut and sew unit in the made-ups segment with a capacity of 10 million units per annum.

Vision 2022

Mr. Goenka says: “We remain fully committed to our Vision 2020 which we announced last year. Recent operational headwinds have put some pressure on the timelines for achieving these targets, and hence we have decided to rechristen our vision as ‘Vision 2022’. To meet our target of $2 billion in revenue, we are focusing on new markets such as India, Europe, Japan, etc., new channels such as e-commerce and hospitality, and new products such as flooring solutions and advanced textiles. For achieving zero net debt, we are focusing on improving our free cash flows by rationalising capex through ancillarisation and optimising working capital”.

Welspun Wel-Trak

Welspun has successfully introduced a patented, end-to-end traceability process called Wel-Trak. This revolutionary process ensures that customers and consumers can trace the provenance of the cotton raw materials throughout the supply chain from farm to the retail shelf. Wel-Trak delivers end-to-end traceability by deploying automated data capture using RFID, customised software for validation and robust IT & ERP systems to enable smooth operations across all stages of production.