The cutting room has largely escaped the sustainability reckoning that has hit garments, packaging, trims and labels. The polymer film running through every automated cutter is consumed in vast quantities, serves no purpose beyond the cut, and goes straight to waste. As sustainability legislation tightens across key export markets, that blind spot is getting harder to ignore.
Krishna Lamicoat, a manufacturer of speciality paper and polyfilms for CAD-CAM operations in the garment industry, has spent the last two years developing a 20-micron plant-based biofilm made from corn starch and other biodegradable compounds. “We have successfully tested it on Lectra, Morgan and Orox cutters. Sample rolls have been sent to garment manufacturers in Indonesia and Vietnam for commercial evaluation, while Jockey has already placed the first commercial order,” said Ashok Chhajer, Director, Krishna Lamicoat.
The film carries CIPET (Central Institute of Petrochemicals Engineering & Technology) certification, issued by the Indian government body that verifies biodegradability and compostability.
The pivot began at Texprocess two years ago. “We had a customer from Fiji who wanted paper with coating for cutters because plastic film was getting banned there. The demand came from a single customer but we found a solution for the whole world,” said Chhajer.
The technical problem was scale. Biofilm has existed in Europe for years, but only for paper bag applications, which require relatively small she et sizes. Industrial fabric cutters run at 2.5 to 3 metres wide and demand a film that holds consistent thickness and tensile properties across the entire width. No one had produced a plant-based film to those specifications at commercial scale before. “We developed our own machinery to achieve this,” said Chhajer.
Pricing has been the historic obstacle. Plant-based alternatives have traditionally cost nearly double polymer film. That equation is shifting. “Polymer prices have risen by nearly 70% in recent times due to geopolitical issues, while biofilm prices have remained largely stable. This has reduced the price gap and made us more competitive,” said Chhajer. Today, Krishna Lamicoat’s biofilm is priced only 5–10% higher than equivalent polymer films on a persquare-metre basis.
Chhajer said buyers are not pushing back on that premium. “The cost impact is very less given the number of fabric layers cut by one layer of film. Buyers today are into sustainability and they don’t mind paying a higher price.” He points to paper bags, more expensive than plastic, yet now the default for food delivery platforms Krishna Lamicoat is now focused on getting global apparel buyers to specify the biofilm in their vendor requirements. “We are talking to buyers and getting them to approve it and tell their vendors to use it,” Chhajer said.
Ashok says the company has no direct competitors in biofilm for cutters today, but expects that to change. Replicating the product requires modified machinery and significant development time, “several months at minimum”, which he expects will hold competition off for now.
Krishna Lamicoat currently exports to around 30 countries from India, with Bangladesh, Jordan and Egypt among its key markets. It is also expanding operations from its BOI-certified facility in Sri Lanka, which exports to Pakistan and offers better logistics economics than shipping from India.
