“Our machine helps save water and electricity”

GERATEX is driven by its core principle of designing future through innovation, with more efficient, cost effective and clean solution for textiles, speciality fibres, plastics etc. The company offers concepts that are productive, powerful and proficient to its customers. GERATEX has its production facility at Karjan near Vadodara, serving national and international customers. The company relies on comprehensive knowledge in design and manufacturing while offering best solutions to customers.

Saurabh Sinha, Manager – Marketing, Geratex Machinery Pvt Ltd, speaks on various products offered by the company and their unique features as compared to that of its competitors.

Excerpts…

Take us through the journey of Geratex Machinery over the years.

Geratex was a company that we acquired from a German company. With our expertise, we started manufacturing wet processing machines. The first thing that we ventured into was washing. Our machine has been in the industry for more than 30 to 35 years.

We decided to come up with something new. With our R&D, what we came out was the use of ultrasonic into washing. Ultrasound is the sound which is 20,000 kilohertz and is not audible to humans. Ultrasonic doesn’t affect the fabric. Ultrasonic has been under study of textile technologists, but was never utilised in textile applications. We are the first. Our Managing Director Venkat Reddy and his well wishers collaborated and came out with this machine with a lot of trials. We have applied for patents, and is almost done.

What makes your product unique from that of the competitors?

Ultrasonic itself is the unique selling preposition. Using that, we are able to reduce water consumption, which is a huge benefit. It is going to be a major game changer in future.

Then, there is also power saving. In our machines, the temperature where we work in is up to 65 degree centigrade; whereas in conventional washers, the temperature required is 90 to 98 degree centigrade. There is space saving too as it is very compact in size. These things makes our product have an edge over our competitors.

Ultrasound helps water molecules. Because of this, washing is more effective than traditional washing. By that we are able to reduce the amount of water used and there is power and space saving. Small and compact unit means lesser maintenance cost.

It’s a very modular unit, and can be installed anywhere.

Geratex Machinery is using the Ultra Sonic technology on industrial size machines in its fabric processing for desized chemical impregnation, bleaching chemical application, mercerising, dyeing or washing, which offers higher efficiency in terms of space, energy usage and also chemicals and water consumption.

The Ultra Sonic waves accelerate the water molecules in the bath and move practically at the speed of sound or several thousand times in a second, which create a turbulent effect in the machine and achieves the whole process in half the time taken by conventional machines, due to the speed of the waves.

Share more details on the unique wet processing machine.

The wet processing machine is completely made in India except the ultrasonic feature, which we imported it from Germany. That ultrasonic unit has gone through a lot of R&D at their facility also to make it as per the needs of the textile industry. The inputs have been given by us and after that only we have come out with the product.

It was a huge challenge for us to bring out a machine with such powerful configurations.

Ultrasonic machine with 25,000 kilohertz is not available anywhere in the world. In fact, it is a new market for them too.

Apart from wet processing machine, which are the other offerings for the textile industry?

Geratex Machinery supplies the complete range – washing, bleaching and mercerizing – of processing machines. Our R&D team is working on other products as well. However, I won’t be able to divulge more details at this point of time. Surely, in coming months, we will be coming out with new products for the Indian market.

Then we have stenters, which we are planning to take it forward now. We have not been taking it ahead because there was not much of enquiries. However in washing, there was a lot of enquiries. But now we are taking up stenters too. Similarly, there are other products in the pipeline.

Which are your stronger markets?

Currently, we have installed our machine in Anubha Textiles, Surat and Loyal Textile Mills in South. Apart from that, we have sold our machines in South America, El Salvador, Turkey and Bangladesh, to name a few. We are planning to market mostly into denim.

How do you look at the market for wet processing industry in India?

I think, the government should come out with a policy wherein new technology has to be given a lot of incentives. Our machine saves a lot of water and electricity. These kind of machines, which are of more important to the environment, should be promoted by the government. At the moment, we don’t see much incentives. Such type of incentives will help the industry. After the GST, many companies have deferred their actions to buy machines.

Processing industry is growing at a normal speed. I see a lot of hope in future.

As far as Geratex is concerned, there is a lot happening. We have two markets – one is the replacement market and the other one is the Indian market. Replacement market is quite huge for us.

How was 2017 for the company?

The year 2017 was a good year for us. The first half was very good was Geratex, but things slowed down a bit in the second half. We have a lot of inquiries from India as well as abroad. Hopefully, we get a lot of new orders in the coming months.