With an aggressive Managing Director at the helm and good orders on hand and a few others in the pipeline, Kusters Calico is currently adding one more bay of 90 x 24 metres to have another 21,000 sq.ft. shop floor area for assembly.
Kusters Calico Machinery Pvt. Ltd., a leading producer of open width wet processing machines for both woven and knitted fabrics, was established near Vadodara in Gujarat in 1996 as a joint venture of Eduard Kusters Maschinenfabrik GmbH & Co. KG (EKK) of Germany and Calico Industrial Engineers (Calico).
Consequently, Eduard Kusters was taken over by a group company of Jagenberg Ag, Germany, and now Jagenberg has the controlling stake in Kusters Calico which has installed around 400 of its machines in different countries worldwide and will be celebrating 20 years of its presence in India next year.
The newly appointed Managing Director of Kusters Calico, Mr. Sushil Verma, has graduated in Mechanical Engineering and also holds a post graduation in Business Administration. He has over 26 years of experience in the machine tools, capital equipments and industrial products industry and for the last 10 years has been heading business units as a profit centre head.
Kusters has a full-fledged design office with a staff of 20 experienced mechanical and electrical design engineers headed by a Design Head. It has also put its thrust on continuous improvements in designs and developing new technologies by appointing a separate manager. The company is spread over 45 acres of land and has a covered area of almost 100,000 sq.ft. It has a modern in-house machine shop, fabrication shop, shot blasting and painting facilities to have better control over delivery and quality.
According to Mr. Verma, Eduard Kusters was known as an ‘Ideas factory’ and Kusters Calico is following the same legacy. Its products like Super Flush, Flush Master, Softknits and anti-deflection S-Rolls are innovative technologies and so they always endeavour to seek customer’s feedback to evaluate their tailor made needs and develop concepts to meet their requirements in an ecological, economical and reproducible way.
He says: “These are the maxims behind the machines and installations that we build for pre-treatment, dyeing, and finishing. Our process technology, automatic controllers, monitoring and control systems, the engineering skill and high quality of our machines and equipments is something which enables fabrics to be processed economically and in an environmentally friendly way.”
Kusters Calico is a one-stop source for processing various woven and knitted fabrics and has machines like Desizing and Singeing; Bleaching, both in single and double stage steamer; Mercerising; Washing; Dyeing in cold pad batch and pad steam and lastly Dewatering in its wide product portfolio.
“Our engineers work on solutions to specific customer problems on the spot, in close cooperation with the customer, with innovation being the key to leading machine and process technology. We can fall back on more than 19 years of experience on own manufacturing and assembly at our national and international locations at Vadodara, India and Muenchengladbach and Krefield, Germany,” says Mr. Verma.
Apart from textile machinery, the company is also designing and manufacturing coating and laminating machines for converting industry in technical collaboration with Polytype Switzerland. It has a number of installations worldwide and are state-of-art machines which operate on very high speeds.
He further discloses: “The converting technology and its applications are totally different. However, it has applications in technical textiles, and we are working on it. We have a skilled set of employees for this business segment, which is a fast growing segment and we are focusing on this seriously and have bagged five orders this year itself,” Mr. Verma says.
Kusters Calico currently exports around 70 per cent of production to Europe, Egypt, Turkey, Bangladesh, Thailand, the US, Korea, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Iran, Russia, Middle East and Africa, with the balance sold in India. Its target now, under the leadership of Mr. Verma is further strengthening its share in the world markets by exploring newer countries and alongside also penetrate deeper into Indian markets and market a minimum 50 per cent share of its production in India.
Speaking about how energy efficient their machines are, Mr. Verma says: “We at Kusters believe in energy conservation concepts for our customers, besides it is also our responsibility towards the next generation to give them a clean environment. We are using high efficiency motors which reduce power consumption drastically. Apart from that we have developed anti deflection S-roll technology which reduces the residual moisture up to 15 percent less after squeezing than ordinary squeezers which results in lesser steam consumption, while the Super Flush and Flush Master concepts are already proven for efficient washing with lesser water consumption due to innovative washing concepts.”
The first six months of 2015 have been very challenging for Kusters due to market conditions, but according to Mr. Verma, suddenly, beginning from the second half, the market has become good for them as they have booked orders totalling to Rs. 45 crores in July and August alone, with a good numbers of enquiries still in the pipeline. Hence, the company is gearing up its production and deliver the machines as per Kusters Calico’s reputation.
“The Kusters Calico management wants to see us as the number-one company in India delivering quality machines in textile wet processing and for coating and lamination industry. Kusters Calico is passing through a time when there is ample opportunity for growth and people are adopting new and better ways of working and delivering results. Under the motto of ‘Affordable Excellence’, we aim to give the best machines and technology at competitive prices,” Mr. Verma shares his vision for the company.
With mounting competition, Kusters Calico plans to be a leading brand in the segments that it operates by tackling the two most important factors, which are mainly divided in to external and internal factors. External relates to market conditions, industry health and government policies, which Mr. Verma remarks, are favourable currently.
Internal relates to processes, systems, engineering designs, customer support, quality procedures, sales aggressiveness, manufacturing capability, etc., which too is under its control, but here too, it is aggressively working on all these internal factors to improve and deliver best results.
“Innovative designs, quality product, timely delivery and prompt service are the only factors which make a company different from others and we recognise this and are working to perfection level,” he reveals.
The Kusters R&D team has recently designed and developed a new solvent less coating machine which is under final trials currently. The team is also working on developing a washing machine for printed fabrics. Also in the pipeline, are some new concepts and improvement projects on existing models of textile machinery which will be launched in the market after exhaustive trials and evaluations.
At ITMA 2015, Kústers Calico will be displaying the following three machines and their special features are given below:
a). Super Flush Washer with Intermittent Squeezer:
i). Combined washing by both horizontal as well as vertical washing thereby producing penetrative, diffusive & turbulent effect.
ii). Lowest water requirement.
iii). Lowest distance between two fabric guidance rollers thereby possible to handle all kinds of tension sensitive woven fabrics from Lycra embedded to voils.
iv). Fabric content of 20 mts.
v). Tension control through load cells.
vi). Circulation liquor quantity independent of incoming fresh water.
b). Flush Master Washer:
i). High jet intense washing thereby producing penetrative, diffusive & turbulent effect.
ii). Lowest water requirement.
iii). Due to high jet washing, regain from flattening effect in pile fabrics is achieved which forms after every nip.
iv). Fabric content of 8 mts.
v). Least tension due to less path in washing compartment.
vi). Circulation liquor quantity independent of incoming fresh water.
c). S Roll Dye Padder: 2
i). Infinately adjustable linear pressure from 12 to 50 N-mm without change of nip profile due to which uniform expression across the width and length is achievable.
ii). Simple proven and stable construction.
iii). High adjustment potential due to two control rolls.
iv). Roll cooling and bearing lubrication integrated in one oil circuit.
v). With controlled linear pressure the deflection controlled roll achieve a specific squeezing nip for every fabric giving constant result.
vi). Smallest trough with 24 lts capacity is also available for woven fabrics.
vii). Available for both woven and knitted fabric applications.