Spun yarn spinning industry is one of the few industries in India which has gained global eminence for many factors which include scale, productivity and quality standards, share in global yarn trade, dependable supplier of quality products, etc. India has the second largest capacity for spinning with 48 million spindles but is the market leader in global yarn trade with 30% share exporting about 1.2 billion kilos of yarn every year.
Indian spinning industry has also the unique capability of offering the entire range of yarns right from the coarsest count like 6s Ne to the finest count like 300sNe both for domestic as well as export markets.
Indian spinning industry is way ahead of other parts of the value chain in the textile industry in terms of technology, innovation and capability mainly because of the ability to source all their needs in terms of machinery, parts & components and accessories from globally renowned manufacturers in India lead by the Lakshmi group of companies. This include Lakshmi Machine Works, Lakshmi Card Clothing, Lakshmi Ring Travellers and others.
However, the Indian Spinning Industry has to take a host of initiatives not only to sustain but also to improve the leadership position further – This includes the following:-
1. While the Indian spinning industry can boast of an installed capacity with much lesser average life than China, we still have more than 15 million spindles which are older than 20 years and need urgent modernisation. The industry should focus on replacing all these older capacities with latest technology machines to have significant gains on productivity, quality, energy efficiency and reduction in labour compliment through automation.
2. While a large portion of the spinning industry spins yarn with a quality better than Uster 5% standards, there is an equally large capacity which produce yarn at average quality levels only. With the quality demands in downstream industries like weaving and knitting going up significantly due to use of high shuttle less looms and knitting machines, these mills need to modernise urgently to sustain their business by producing quality yarn. In addition, compact yarn is demanded by users in most of the segments using cotton yarn, Viscose yarn and also Polyester cotton yarn. The adoption of compact spinning technology by the Indian spinning industry needs further acceleration.
3. Over the last decade, low cost countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam have added to their capacity significantly and have already reached capacities of 14 million and 7.5 million spindles respectively. Though bulk of the yarn produced in these countries go for captive consumption, India needs to further augment the capacity to add to the share in the global yarn trade.
4. While India is the market leader in yarn trade, more than 95% of the yarn exports is mainly cotton based. Similarly, more than 80% of the garments and made-ups exported are cotton based. Out of the 6 billion kilos of yarn produced in the country every year, more than 75% is cotton based – may be because of abundant availability of cotton as a raw material in India. However, the opportunities available in the global market for synthetics and blends based products are abundant both in finished products like garments & apparels and in intermediate products like yarn& fabric. India has to significantly improve the ecosystem for synthetic based products in India urgently to make quick use of these opportunities.
5. Digitisation and use of Artificial Intelligence in each part of the manufacturing process is the need of the current and future. The pandemic has taught us how such transformation could be done at rapid pace once the need becomes urgent. The spinning industry should also quickly adopt these technologies using the modern and latest technology machinery available from the house of “Lakshmi”.
‘Carding is the heart of spinning’ – says the adage. Lakshmi Card Clothing is a market leader in carding solutions and is always at the forefront offering the most innovative solutions in card clothing products as well as in card room machineries. Lakshmi Card Clothing has continuously invested in design, research & development of products, and manufacturing processes for achieving world class quality consistently throughout the life of the clothing. In the process, Lakshmi Card Clothing has reduced the cost of card clothing per kilogram of sliver produced by more than 15% in the last ten years playing a key role enhancing competitiveness of the spinning mills in India.
The company offers a host of innovative products like “Centura&Evolv 2X cylinder wires”, global first “Contra Flat tops”, high performance “Edge Stationary tops”, etc., to support the spinning industry to meets its needs of high productivity, consistent quality and longer life. Lakshmi Card Clothing is proud of co-creating such innovative products by working with the customers over the years. The efforts and initiatives would be further accelerated to continue to support the customers with products featuring innovative and breakthrough technology.