Technology upgradation gathering momentum
Century Textiles and Industries Ltd. (CTIL) was incorporated in 1897 as a public limited company. Century Textile Mills was the only industrial unit of the company till 1951.
Birla Century, a division of Century Textiles, which was set up in 2009, is a state-of-the-art, vertically integrated textile plant located at Jhagadia, Bharuch in Gujarat.
The company uses world class technology to produce a wide range of textile products such as suitings, shirtings, household linens, elegantly tailored household linens and fine fabrics. Shirtings and suitings comes with innovative finishes such as wrinkle-free, crease resistant, amazingly smooth for domestic and international markets. The plant is equipped with modern laboratories to test the fabrics as per international standards.
Efforts are taken constantly by the R&D department to improve the quality, value addition to the products and cost reduction which, in turn, helps in developing a new market segment.
Technical upgradation
At Birla Century a new versatile fabric processing machine, i.e., pad steam dyeing has been installed. It can be used for dyeing of any colour in reactive, VAT and sulphur dyeing with any shade depth in cotton as well as blended fabric. It is an energy-efficient machine giving speedy and high production with consistent longer shade length to avoid batch to batch shade variation. Further it reduces value loss as it ensures uniformity and consistency in shade. It also helps control damages.
The special features of this machine are that it produces uniform shade consistency and gives smooth, lustrous appearance on the fabric. This machine is used to develop VAT colour shade after Pad dry process and also helps in reduction clearing of dispersed dye to avoid cross staining on cotton part, which improves rubbing fastness of pad thermosol fabric. Shade correction of dyed fabric can also be done by this machine on open width form.
At Birla Century with installation of the Multi Cross Linking (MXL) washer, fabrics can be finished with special treatment giving wrinkle resistance and also resistance to pilling / abrasion. This also gives fabric with moisture management properties along with soft hand feel and with fast drying properties.
Lycra
Nowadays, fashion trends keep changing, and users select extremely decent and comfortable outfits. Garments having elastic or stretch property are much more in demand. For this, the research and innovation wing has come out with a few ideas, i.e., to upgrade ring frames with Lycra attachment for the production of cotton yarn, improving yarn path on spinning machines, using special additives for strengthening the yarn further, and using lower quality viscose from main stream.
Rayon & tyre cord
As a part of the company’s expansion and modernisation drive, three additional Pot Spun Yarn (PSY) spinning machines with balancing equipment in spin bath and four Continuous Spun Yarn (CSY) spinning machines are expected to be commissioned by the mid of 2013 and additional six CSY machines by March 2014. After this the capacity of PSY and CSY will increase by about 1800 tonnes per year at an estimated cost of Rs. 62 crores.
Zero twist machines for rayon tyre yarn were commissioned for producing rayon tyre yarn packages of 8 kg and above directly on the paper tubes. Break bobbins of zero twist were being downgraded on the basis of low weight despite meeting all the requirements of physical properties. To overcome this situation, a zero twist rewinding machine was developed indigenously, by which break bobbins can be spliced and warped to packages upto 8 kgs to salvage good quality yarn and improve realisation.
The eco-friendly energy-efficient centrifugal chiller of 600 TR was commissioned in July 2012. This chiller is equipped with variable speed drive to optimize speed control, having compact panel for observing all the operating parameters, utilizes eco-friendly refrigerant 134A and consumes less power by about 15 per cent as compared to old screw chiller at peak load.
This year the capacity at outsource coning operations at Bhiwandi was optimized by adding 138 Lessona machines (6 spindles each) in December 2012.
Added to its expansion drives, Century Textiles focuses on robotics and automation in spinning and after treatment section, development of high tenacity VFY yarn and twisted yarn and also to reduce its chemical cost and water consumption in the future.
In order to boost exports, different initiatives have been taken by the company. New products in textiles were made for exports markets like the US, the UK, the UAE, South Africa, Europe and North Africa. Bed linens found its market in the US and dyed shirtings in the UK and the UAE. In the case of viscose filament yarn (VFY), efforts were made to export large quantities of dyed yarns to South Africa, Europe and North Africa. Pakistan is a big consumer of VFY and their annual consumption is estimated at 22,000 tons per annum which was initially supplied by Chinese yarn manufacturers. But now India plays a major role in this export.
People at Century Textiles have been working with the highest level of efficiency, to turn out products comparable to international standards. As a recognition to their sincere effort and hard work, Maharashtra Energy Development Agency (MEDA) presented them the “Continuous Energy Efficient Company” Award. Also its Rayon, Tyre Cord and Chemical Division won the Gold Trophy at the Convention of Quality Circle – 2012 held in Hyderabad.
CTIL also has business interests in areas like cement, pulp and paper manufacturing.