Massive knitting capacity for socks manufacturing
The Pakistan-based Interloop, established in 1992, has emerged as one of the largest hosiery manufacturers at the global level with a customer base of top brands, including the likes of Nike, Adidas, Puma and Reebok. Interloop commenced its operations with just 10 knitting machines and gained customer confidence by offering quality products, fulfilling orders and maintaining global production standards.
The company has heavily invested for raising the production capacity and currently has 4,500+ state-of-the-art knitting machines in operation with production of 530+ million pairs of socks per annum. The annual turnover exceeds PKR 30 billion. The annual yarn production capacity is 25 million kg and the dyeing capacity is 4.5 million kg.
Apart from expanding its operations in Pakistan, Interloop has gone global by establishing a production facility in Bangladesh. Interloop has service level agreements with ILNA Incorporation (North America), Global Veener Trading Ltd. (Switzerland) and Euro Sox Plus BV (Holland) which represents Interloop in the North American and European region, to identify emerging growth opportunities in the socks business and provide trend analysis, sales, marketing, warehousing and logistic services.
A leading global manufacturer of socks, Interloop is looking forward to enhancing its growth in the hosiery business and also entering new product lines, including denim jeans. The denim segment is estimated to grow globally at about 6.4% per annum from $57 billion in 2016 to over $75 billion in 2021. Revenues in the global hosiery market are expected to touch $51 billion per annum by 2021 from $43 billion in 2016 at a CAGR of 3.5%.
The company has initiated a pilot project for apparel under its fully owned subsidiary IL Apparel (Private) Ltd. Interloop has plans to set up a denim production facility for stitching denim jeans at Lahore. It will procure denim fabric from other companies and will stitch jeans at its production facility which will be capable of housing machinery for stitching 40,000 pieces of denim jeans a day. The expansion is being undertaken in a phased manner with commercial production commencing from October next and production related machinery to be inducted in batches with the last batch (with cumulative plant capacity of producing 40,000 pieces of denim/day) expected to be inducted by November 2020.
Interloop currently produces 530+ million pairs of socks/tights each year from its four hosiery production facilities in Pakistan and the one in Bangladesh through its associate IL Bangla. The company is hopeful of high demand from its customers backed by global growth in the hosiery segment expected in the years to come. The planned expansion in hosiery is projected to add 22.6% additional production capacity and take the actual production of socks in excess of 75 million dozens/annum.
Interloop is setting a new facility with 1,200 knitting machines and other machinery to support production of hosiery items. In its existing plants, the hosiery unit 1 has 1,270 knitting machines, unit 2 has 1,620 knitting machines and 14 yarn dyeing machines, unit 3 has 1,084 knitting machines, and unit 4 has 627 knitting machines. The spinning plant of the company has a capacity of 46,704 spindles.
Interloop is not only in talks with its existing customers but is also approaching new customers for its denim range. Given the global growth seen in both the hosiery and denim segments and the overall growth forecast in the garments industry, Interloop is well positioned to register growth both in revenue and market share.
Interloop is also investing in computer-aided design & cutting machines from Lectra, sewing machines from Brother & Sip of Italy, garment dry process machines from Jeanologia, garment wet process machines from Tonello of Italy and knitting machines from Lonati.
With the proposed expansion plans, the company will be able to increase the capacity of hosiery products from 52 million dozens pair of socks/tights to 75 million dozen pair of socks/tights, and a new line of clothing will be introduced in the form of denim jeans.
A significant factor in Interloop’s sustained growth is its ability to anticipate changes in technology, industry standards and customer preferences and to successfully develop new products in time. For this purpose, it has established a vertical sampling facility in Faisalabad, equipped with the latest equipment and modern labs that take care of customer requirements, development of product as per customer specifications, recording parameters for costing and bulk execution and improving processes through Kaizen activities.
The company currently operates four manufacturing facilities for hosiery products and one for spinning in Pakistan. In addition, IL Bangla Ltd., an associated company, operates a hosiery plant in Bangladesh.