No more limiting capabilities to just polyester, georgettes printing and dyeing, embroidery and digital printing, Surat is moving fast to expand its product offerings… from foraying into cotton spinning, weaving and dyeing, the textile city is equally surging towards warp knitting over the past four years, which was earlier the forte of Amritsar and Ludhiana. Globally, warp knitted fabrics which is extensively used for sportswear, lingerie, shoes, car seat covers, mattresses along with technical textiles like automobile filtration, lining and pocketing mesh, adhesives or bandage backing has been the strength of China. Team Apparel Online spoke with a few companies which have forayed into warp knitting and found them very upbeat, many claiming that they are giving better quality than China.
Incessantly, mounting demand in the domestic market along with the same in the Middle East, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka encouraged many entrepreneurs in Surat to foray into warp knitting. As the production of the same requires minimal labour requirement, it became all the more a viable preposition for many. Today, Surat has more than 300 warp knitting machines and another 100 are in the process of installation. The trend is not limited to bigger players, and even the small and medium players are also investing in warp knitting machines, though just maybe one or two machines. While the domestic market is mainly using warp knitted fabrics in kidswear and ladies garments, the international markets are buying it for sportswear, lingerie and technical textiles.
Interestingly, many players in Surat shared that the phenomenal success of Silvasa based company Bhilosa Industries was inspiration for them to get into warp knitting. With reasonably big capacities in spinning, Bhilosa Industries forward integrated by foraying into warp knitting about nine months back and today the company has developed good buyer base in Panipat, Ludhiana and Bhiwandi for its warp knitted fabric. “Seeing huge demand in the domestic market which was largely dependent on the imports from China motivated us to get into the manufacturing of warp knitted fabric and having tasted success I am planning to double my production capacities,” shares Kumar Jain, Managing Director, Bhilosa Industries.
Players like Surbhi Textile Mills, Milan Textiles, K S Fibre, Sainath Knitex, to mention a few have already established themselves as warp knitted fabric manufacturers and many new entrants are now coming into this segment. Kaya Knits has recently taken the plunge in warp knitting and is looking at commissioning its plant by the end of September this year. “Our priority will be defect less fabric so we are investing into state-of-the-art plant with advance machinery, from Liba, Germany. We shall be producing wider width fabrics of around 220 inches with production speed of 2800 RPM. The capacity of the new plant will be 5 lakh metres per month in brasso fabric and 10 lakh metres in net fabric,” informs Manish Khurana, Director of the company who is presently into the business of processing and trading.
“The multi use of warp knitted fabrics, apart from children’s wear and dress material, like in shoe fabric and car seat covers, makes it more viable. The versatility of the fabric and its applications are manifold.”
Aditya, VN Creation
Quality is one of the major reasons for the growth of warp knitted fabric production in Surat as many buyers complained that the fabric being imported from China was having serious quality issues. Taking the clue, many manufacturers backed by growing consciousness towards quality and the willingness of buyers to pay a price for quality, grabbed the opportunity to produce quality fabric. “Though Chinese fabric is much cheaper than the fabric we manufacture, but due to quality we have an edge. Advanced and newly installed setup and local availability of raw material also helps to ensure quality,” says Bipin Patel, Technical Director, Surbhi Textile Mills. The other compelling factors which helped Surat’s growth in warp knitting are long lead times when importing from China, difficult payment terms and a lot of efforts going into coordination.
Majorly the companies are producing net fabric but there are few companies which are also producing Rachel fabrics. Milan Textiles, one of the largest manufacturers of warp knitted fabrics in Surat is producing Rachel fabrics. Sharing his views, Brijesh Gondalia, Partner of the company says, “Undoubtedly the demand of net fabrics is larger; however the demand for Rachel fabric is also growing.” With around 33 warp knitting machines now Brijesh is looking at adding more machines in next six months.
“Despite huge import from China and fast changing fashion of Surat, I see continuous demand for warp knitted fabric. Traders are more comfortable with local manufacturers and quality can’t be ignored today. It is being taken as a new fabric as woven fabric is already being used extensively.”
Atul Goel, MD, Goel Knit Fab
Not everyone is convinced that warp knitting is the best way forward and many insiders feel that the city has always been victim of “herd mentality” be it in processing, cotton spinning or digital printing. The companies which enter into a new segment with proper homework are successful but the ones who just get into because others are doing it… get into major problems. Gaurav Chhabra, Director, G D Knit Tex is among those who entered into warp knitting with comprehensive homework and four years on he is doing extremely well, and is now going in for expansion. “We can look at the growth of warp knitting sector in Surat with two perspectives: the first is Surat entrepreneurs follow blindly whatever the majority in the market are doing and the other is that though the dependency on Chinese fabric is on a decline, the import from China is still 3 times more vis-à-vis what is being produced locally. So there is vast scope to grow in this segment which would automatically pull down the imports from China,” concludes Gaurav.
