We are planning a capital expenditure of about Rs 950 crore
Nitin Spinners was established as a response to the apparent need in the Indian Textile Industry for high-quality products and services. The company’s leadership in cotton yarn and fabric manufacturing is driven by continuous investments in the latest technologies, resulting in delivering international standard quality products. An ISO 9001:2015 Company and a Government of India recognised export house, has emerged as one of India’s largest and reputed producers of 100% cotton and blended yarn and fabrics with exports to more than 60 countries across the globe. In this interaction with Divya Shetty, Dinesh Nolkha, Managing Director and co-founder of Nitin Spinners, shares insights about the company, including its production capacity, highly sought-after products, current industry challenges, and many other intriguing facts.
Since 1993, Nitin Spinners has been serving the spinning industry. How has the company evolved over the years?
With just two open-end machines and 384 rotors, Nitin Spinners got its start. So, up until 1999, we solely paid attention to open-end spinning. In the year 2000, we installed 14112 Spindles of Ring Spinning and became a 100% Export Oriented Unit (EOU), the same year that we installed our ring spinning plant. Later, in 2002, we launched our knitting business with seven knitting machines. We have expanded our business over time in every sector. We have two production facilities at 2 locations, both of them are in Rajasthan (Bhilwara District and Chittorgarh District).
At present we have 3,08,000 spindles, 63 knitting machines and 3500 rotors. Before 2018, the entire manufacturing process took place in a single site. But we made the conscious decision to start a new textile mill in order to increase our production capacity. In order to address this, we established a new integrated textile mill that includes spinning, weaving, dyeing, printing, and finish processing. We started making synthetic blended yarn in 2019, prior to that we solely worked with cotton.
How has been the journey of the company in India? (in terms of when it was established, manufacturing facility, products offered, spinning segments served, sales, etc)
We currently serve a multitude of market segments. We serve the knit fabric, woven garment market as well as those for home textiles, industry fabrics, athletic wear, inner wear, and denim. We offer a full range of cotton yarn products, including single yarn, double yarn, and others. So, we have established ourselves as a trustworthy supplier for a number of industries throughout the years.
Today, we can weave and spin roughly 2.5 million metres (or 25 lakh metres) per month. All things considered, we began with open-ended spinning but have since added value by entering into Ring Spinning, Knitting and Weaving. Our present production capacity is as follows:-
Production
Yarn : 75000 tons per annum
Knitting Fabric : 9000 tons per annum
Woven Fabric : 30 million meters per annum
How is the demand for various spinning solutions offered by Nitin Spinners? Are you seeing high-demand for some of your products & solutions?
We have tried to expand our business in all segment of spinning viz. Open-end spinning, ring spinning, and compact spinning are all types of spinning systems. We have core spun elasthane yarn, and various value-added yarns including slub yarn, sustainable fibre.
We have recently noticed a strong demand for stretch yarns. Stretch fabrics was previously only worn by women, but it is now found in men’s pants as well. So the stretch yarn industry has seen good growth over the past one to two years. We are also noticing a lot of demand in the denim sector. We are also considering the many technical textiles choices available, so if anything intriguing is presented to us, we will without a doubt explore it.
What are the key challenges faced by the spinning industry today? How is your company helping them overcome some of these challenges?
The industry’s biggest issue right now is the price volatility and availability of raw materials. Despite being a major producer of cotton, polyester, and viscose, the government’s numerous policies have led to a limitless export of our raw materials. Raw material export is up to 30 to 35 percent of our capacity, which actually limits the growth of the spinning industry moving forward. Therefore, this industry can be quite stable if we see significant value addition being done in the form of yarn & fabrics.
Our industry requires a lot of capital; we observe many automations and advances, but these require large investment. As a result, it affects medium-sized and small firms. Therefore, the government must make sure that there is an economic size for new units that will make the best use of the power, labour, and raw materials, a scarce resource.
What are emerging trends in the spinning products and technologies industry today?
In terms of technology, the past 15 to 20 years have witnessed tremendous advancement. The air jet spinning is currently the latest innovation that we are trying to implement. This technology gives fabrics a better feel and finish, and it works with both cotton and manmade fibres.
Second, the majority of manmade fibres, such as polyester and viscose in their many forms, are rapidly approaching the texture and finish of cotton fibre. Numerous polyester manufacturers are working brilliantly to equal the quality of cotton. In the future, cotton may be partially replaced by synthetic fibres.
What is the Nitin Spinners’ global and domestic expansion strategy?
We are planning a capital expenditure of about Rs.950 crores covering all segments of our business including Spinning, Weaving, Knitting and Finish Fabrics. Synthetic fibre is becoming increasingly prevalent, as I already indicated, therefore we are also expanding our capacity in that area including focus on Airjet Spinning.
Talking of global markets, we generated around 70% of our top line through exports last year. We export to more than 60 different nations worldwide. We have consistently exported 60 to 70 percent of our products for the past ten years. In addition to our direct consumers, we also have a distribution network of our own. We will continue to strive our growth in the export market, but focus will be on ever growing domestic markets now onwards.
