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The Textile Magazine
DECEMBER 2011
a major growth driver of its apparel
fabric sales.
Technical textiles are speciality
fabrics, such as fire-retardant fabric,
water-repellent and soil release fab-
ric and high visibility fabric. They
require special functionality and are
used in industrial, aerospace, mili-
tary, marine, medical, construction,
transportation and high technology
areas. Due to their specialised na-
ture, they offer higher margins than
conventional textiles.
The technical textiles market in In-
dia is still in its infancy and remains
unorganised. It is also highly import
intensive. Estimates suggest that this
market will grow at a CAGR of 10
per cent to reach Rs. 146,000 crores
($31 billion) by 2020.
Alok ventured into the made-ups
segment by installing wider width
(3 metre width) processing house at
Vapi, and as forward integration, set
up a unit of 100 stitching machines
and other allied machines at Vapi.
Subsequently, it set up a new fac-
tory with 400 stitching machines at
Silvassa, taking the capacity to six
million sets.
Alok has created a large and pres-
tigious customer base with Wal –
Mart, Target and Kohl’s in the home
textiles segment. Looking to the
good demand the company later on
expanded its weaving and process-
ing capacity. The products include
sheet-sets, duvets, comforters, blan-
kets, quilts, bed-in-a-bag, curtains in
prints, solids, embroidery, sateen’s,
flannel, Jacquards, dobbies, yarn
dyed from 180 TCs to 1000 TCs.
Within this segment, the terry
towel plant was commissioned in
2009-10. It has 48 looms, capable of
producing 6,700 tpa and an equiva-
lent amount of terry towel process-
ing capacity.
Home textiles are
exported to overseas
retailers and brands,
sold in the domestic
market to retailers
and brands, and also
distributed through
the Indian retail ven-
ture ‘H&A’ Stores
and the UK-based
‘Store Twenty One’
outlets.
In home textiles,
processing capacity
is being increased by
22.50 million me-
tres to 105 million
metres, while weav-
ing capacity is being
raised by 24 million
metres to a total ca-
pacity of 92 million metres. The ter-
ry towel capacity is being doubled to
13,400 tonnes.
Garments
Alok commenced its garment
manufacturing operations in 2004 as
a pilot project by setting up a unit
of 100 stitching machines at Turbhe,
Navi Mumbai, with an installed ca-
pacity of one million pieces per an-
num. The company has evolved into
a nominated or preferred vendor for
big global label and retailers like
Mother Care, Carrefour, JC Penny
and Kappa. With the removal of
quotas and sourcing of garments by
the Western countries from low-cost
countries like India, garment stitch-
ing has become an important value-
added service for the buyer. With
a view to increasing its production
capacity, the company has added
1,547 Juki machines. Currently it
has installed capacities of 22 million
cover story