Bombay Rayon Fashions Ltd. (BRFL) is one of the leading vertically integrated textile companies in India. The company has a strong presence across the entire value chain, from fibre to yarn to textile to garment and fashion. A manufacturer of a wide variety of fabrics and garments and is the largest manufacturer of shirts in the country and the company operates through its manufacturing facilities in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The company has also one sampling unit in Mumbai.
The company’s current manufacturing capacity is 235 million metres of fabric and 88.8 million garment pieces, supported by the state-of-the-art infrastructure and designs. It exports its high-end designer garments to countries like the US, the UK and the rest of Europe. The brand name marketed as Bombay Rayon is sold in the domestic market and exported to the Middle East and European countries.
Bombay Rayon’s turnover for 2011-12 increased to Rs. 2,734.96 crores from Rs. 2,254.84 crores in the previous year, an increase of over 21 per cent. Net profit for the year was Rs. 206.51 crores (Rs. 226.69 crores).
Mr. Janardan Agrawal, Chairman, Bombay Rayon, says: “In FY2013, we plan to capitalise on all our existing facilities by consolidation. We are confident that as the largest vertically integrated textile company in the country, we will continue to achieve impressive gains both in terms of new geographies as well as higher operational efficiencies”.
BRFL has successfully commenced the commercial production of its last phase of expansion projects of yarn dyeing at Tarapur and weaving at Islampur and Tarapur and consequently completing the all ongoing expansion projects. The cost of the expansion project was funded partly by equity capital already raised and partly by way of term loans under the Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (TUFs) entitling the company for an interest subsidy of five per cent, in addition to capital subsidy of 10 per cent on the total investment in processing garment machineries.
Integrating yarn dyeing facility ensures seamless transition in case grey yarn needs dyeing before weaving. The company has two yarn dyeing facilities, one each in Bangalore and Maharashtra. Depending upon end use as fabric or in garmenting, grey yarn made from the company’s unit at Indore or procured from other manufacturers is dyed as per order specification using the latest technology machinery.
BRFL weaves a wide range of fabrics like cotton, viscose, polyester fabrics using latest technology of air jet looms imported from Toyota and Picanol to ensure highest quality and top finish. The woven fabric is then processed depending on the final requirement. The processing stages include dyeing of fabric, screen printing and ammonia processing.
The company has also the latest technology and machines for screen-printing. Designs are prepared on advanced cad-cam design equipments and are engraved on rotary screens using photo exposure. This process ensures the value addition in printing on the fabric.
Ammonia processing technology is used to increase tear strength of the fabric and make it softer to touch, as also increase the wrinkle recovery angle after washing to enable non-iron process. Finally, the finished fabric is packed using the state-of-the-art La Mechanica machines.
BRFL is one of the few players to have integrated fashion into its business model. It has all the capabilities and resources to deliver complete fashion solutions to customers – manufacturers of readymade garments or top global brands selling garments and apparels manufactured by the company.
From the time a design is sketched to the time the garment is put on the shelf for the customer to buy, it is called the Mindto-Market (MTM) cycle. In other words, the industry is constantly producing today what will be demanded tomorrow – the future.
BRFL, the entire strategic thinking flows out of its holistic understanding about the future. Whether it is in augmenting the spinning and weaving capacities to increasing the fabric processing capacities, every step is taken with a view to the future.
Mr. Agrawal said: “At Bombay Rayon, we have been driving consolidation by integrating the entire textile value chain: from fibre to fabric to fashion to future. Integrating resources and capabilities, of strengths and skills, of vision and venture is critical and crucial for a sustained competitive advantage in the emerging textile space. Fashion cycles are getting shorter, and this is putting immense pressure on global labels and brands to source from vertically integrated players who have in-house capability to deliver end-to-end solutions”.
Future is not only about fashion and trends and emerging fads. In the textile business, the future world-view encompasses diverse view points of anthropology, social and political drivers of change, technological advances, behavioural sciences, psychology, scenario-planning, and many more such disciplines and faculties. This understanding of the emerging world of tomorrow needs to be factored in with the realities of today. Only then will solutions for future be in view.