ICC to focus on product innovations

Indian Card Clothing (ICC) is one of the leaders in wires, tops and flexible card clothing. The company has a line of card upgrade products, which aim at adding carding efficiency to older cards. Its Web Catcher and Accura Carding have added significantly to the returns at hundreds of mills. ICC has also developed innovative products like Accura Beater Segment, Sharprite wire resharpening device, Sharprite tops, all rover mounting machine ARM 08 and Clipit4060 flat clipping machine. 

Mehul Trivedi, Managing Director, Indian Card Clothing, speaks to the ITJ about the plans for India-ITME, which will be held in December 3 to 8, 2016 in Mumbai, and how the card clothing market is faring in India.

Excerpts…

Continuous innovation is in core of ICC’s value. ICC with its unceasing product innovation creates value to customer. We always look at the need of the industry and focus on developing products which will improve the working accuracy, give values to spinning mills like improved life and consistency in quality.

This year, we focussed in expanding our new range of card clothing in micro alloy steel for cylinder and tops. In our Primus and Maxus plus series, we have developed cylinder wires for extended durability. In tops, we have developed tops using steel with special chemistry for Triumph Progressive series to process fine cotton in latest generation of wider width cards. This compliments our earlier developed wires in Maxus plus, Aero doffer and Nextra Tops, which are very successful, are already working in various spinning mills.

To achieve a consistent carding quality over the whole life of card clothing it is very essential that right from card clothing installation to regular maintenance, proper devices and proper procedures are used. ICC had developed various patented unique card room servicing machines, which takes care of this need. At ITMA Milan, ICC had launched a new concept patented device, the digital tops height measuring device for both ONCARD and OFF CARD application. The device has now further been automated so that accuracy in maintenance of tops can be achieved even with least operator expertise. Assurance of longer life with consistent quality of tops can be achieved by using this device.

Card clothing demand depends on the installed capacity of carding machines. The installed base of carding machines in India is 26,679 cards of which 903 are very slow speed cards, 6,928 are slow speed cards, 13,179 are high production cards and 5,669 are super production cards. This generates an annual demand of 8,319 sets of card clothing. The bulk of the carding machines in India fall within the high production category. The slower speed cards have become uneconomic to operate due to power and manpower cost. The annual increase in the demand for card clothing is approximately 2 per cent, which is mainly in the category of super production cards. This year, market sentiment is subdued due to mainly increase of cotton price by around 30 per cent. This has resulted heavy reduction of margin for the cotton spinning mills.

ICC has always been recognised as a “value for money” brand in the market. As a solution provider for last 60 years to the spinning industry, ICC had focused on creating a strong service base. Apart from service station in locations like Coimbatore, Madurai, Guntur in India, we also have service stations in Turkey. Our latest innovation of card room accessories has enabled us to provide an option to mills to properly maintain card clothing and achieve a consistent quality over a longer life. 

UK-based Garnett Wire Ltd provides a comprehensive range of card clothing and services. Many leading nonwoven manufacturer worldwide use Garnett wires. Garnett also provides card clothing for recycling process. As nonwoven and other technical textile has started flourishing in India, ICC has now started to develop the products required for this industry. Synergy between Garnett and ICC to develop specific product required for this market have been of immense help to achieve quality products in nonwoven sector.

ICC presently supplies card clothing to around 20 countries. Countries with developed spinning industries like Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, Kenya, Thailand and Pakistan are the major market for our card clothing. We have in fact opened our branch office in Turkey to cater need of card clothing in surrounding countries. As we are the only manufacturer of both metallic and flexible card clothing in India to spin all varieties of fibres, be it cotton, manmade, wool or other fibres, we are able to supply diverse cross section of spinning industries in these countries.

Please share with us some of the details of the production and other facilities of ICC including the branches and export outlets.

Presently, we have two manufacturing facility at Nalagarh (Himachal Pradesh) and at Pimpri (Pune). We have increased our manufacturing capacity to meet future growth in the market including various emerging segments like nonwoven. We have our branch offices at all major spinning locations like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, Delhi, Madurai, Guntur, Ludhiana, and Mumbai with service station facility at Coimbatore, Madurai and Guntur. We had also set up branch office and service station in Turkey to cater needs of spinning mills in surrounding countries. We have our channel partners in countries like Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan to meet the needs of card clothing and also to provide the technical support in active consultation with us.

In present days mills have more number of super production cards, which save power and also reduce manpower cost. This allows mills to reduce the input cost for production of per kg yarn. For increased running efficiency of this super production card it is very essential that the stoppage time for maintenance is minimal and higher perfection in maintenance procedure is adhered. To provide support in this area we have now initiated active service support with our latest generation card room service machineries. All of our Branch offices will be equipped with these latest devices with trained service personnel, who will provide service support to mills. At ICC it is a continual process in developing various card clothing products for improved life and consistency in quality.