Harmonising the strings of econology

The green label products have better demands and higher price realisation, says Avinash Mayekar

Do it now …worry later! It is time to modify it.

Harmonise now…create infinite melodies

Emphasising “Do it now with caution for the environment and the universe is one symphony of technology and ecology crafting infinite melodies”

In today’s business whenever we think of any new initiative, be it for any industry and especially focus on our own textile industry it will only last long and effective if our production, the end product, the raw material, and the practices all in one synchronisation of 360- degree sustainability. Our textile industry for years has been tagged with the evil label of being the worst polluting industry and so we need to go one step beyond and take proper care of the environment. So when harmony in between ecology and technology comes into play the textile industry is the one which needs it the most and needs it now!

So the first step in this journey is “To Forget”. We need to forget whatever we have done in the past, old practices, old habits, and the attitude of “19/20 (Unees/Bis)-everything will work out” needs to be left behind, or else our businesses are what will be left behind in the near future—the harsh but practical reality of today. We need to come out with our own innovative ways to take care of the ecology.

If we look across the entire value chain of the textile industry, right from ginning, we can see that in the case of ginning, many bad practices are still being followed in some companies. The cotton crop coming from various fields is piled up in farms with no control over contamination going inside such as insects, viruses, bacteria, or it is exposed to harmful environmental conditions and hence that needs to be controlled and monitored regularly. This can be easily implemented by adopting perfect warehousing systems. This warehouse can either be built up by the cooperative societies and also take care of good farming techniques. Thereafter, the cotton goes to the ginning factories that need to be again sent through proper vehicles, which would be at least properly covered and maintained with cleanliness. There is a technology adopted at the factories for contamination control but a technology-driven warehouse and transportation system will give long-term benefits and higher productivity. Moreover adequate cotton farming techniques like proper watering systems where we can save water and also ensure that crop gets the adequate water essential for its proper growth. Initiatives like drip irrigation and control watering to the plant are all easily available in the market, implementation and adoption are what is needed to be done on priority. The other solution is to use good seeds and implement organic farming. If one cannot completely avoid chemicals and fertilizers then at least use ecofriendly pesticides & fertilizers in controlled quantities to avoid causing harm to the environment and human beings.

In case of spinning, we need to have technological advancement. As far as machines are concerned, most of our machines are more than 15 to 20 years old and hence they consume a lot of power. We need to take into consideration the average power consumption per kilogram of yarn. New renewable energy sources would help to reduce cost of production.

In case of weaving preparatory and weaving, we need to have efficient techniques as far as natural fibers are concerned. Techniques that ensure the use of good quality sizing ingredients to apply size paste that withstand the good forces thereby allowing the yarns to withstand forces.   Adopt the latest technology that creates fewer sounds and is automated. This will not only provide energy efficiency and breakdown signals to rectify immediately but will also save on labor as a single operator can monitor a cluster of machines as per end application.

Fabric processing technology should be the one that ensures adequate water saving and uses eco-friendly dyes and chemicals to take care of the bleaching operation the dyeing operation or the printing elements. Also, care needs to be taken to ensure a good material-to-liquor ratio is maintained during the process. This is must in today’s scenario.

For Garmenting one must use state-of-the-art equipment by which there would be less handling and less contribution of the human elements leading to errors while manufacturing. This would facilitate less wastage.

Apart from the good technology adoption and practices we need to take care of waste management across the entire value chain. Complete waste manufacturing machines must be installed to take care of all the waste generated. This will create more and more textile recycled fibers thereby allowing the industry to be 360 degree sustainable.

Challenges in achieving the ambitious target

The Indian government has kept a very ambitious target, whereas the present geopolitical issues are not favorable for growth. There are so many things that are happening on the global front we have competition from countries like China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Cambodia in case of garments. Garments are the highest margin products but somewhere I think we are still focusing more on the yarn business. And we are yet to go ahead with the complete value chain under our fold. Such ambitious targets can only be achieved when there is a complete value chain working towards the goal of $350 billion. For this target, we need to also focus on technical textiles which is an emerging field. So the target can be achieved but with planning, we need to segregate our goals. We need to understand our strategy to achieve targets in various fields, right from conventional textiles, textile engineering and technology to technical textiles.

Opportunities in 2025

Most of the development across the textiles, technical textiles and apparel sectors that have happened till now after the pandemic era either growing, started to grow, or have at least shown some signals for growth by the end of 2024.

Hence we must take advantage of 2025 since we have our own consumption to take care of along with it the export market that is eager to give India a chance over competition. We are already signing FTAs with various countries that will be in operation in 2025 which will give rise to exports and provide the needed boost. As far as marketing efforts are concerned, we need to adopt competitive technologies to come out with our products which would be cost-effective in the market. We need to train our people and take good advantage of their multi-skilling activities in India to produce products with lesser operating costs. We also need the banking sector to push aggressively the finance that will allow the manufacturers to take care of the opportunities ahead in 2025. 

Sustainability for India to be a global leader

It is an era of care for the environment. Take care of the environment and you have multiple global opportunities. The entire business potential lies in businesses that would take care of ecological factors and technological advancements. The focus must be on taking care of the environment. Not only by way of taking care of the type of fibers that would be used for producing textiles, garments, or technical textiles but also by how effectively we are utilising our resources, and how we are taking care of the green initiatives being developed by various countries. So, according to me, there would be more potential for businesses who would take care of the environment and this factor will allow them to score on the other competitors who are not worried about the environment today.

How will modern technologies help gain competitive edge?

It is obvious that when we are using modern technologies it means that we can get much better productivity. At the same time, we would have lower operating costs such as power cost, water cost, and other operational cost of labour. We can use technologies that produce much better quality products as well as eco-friendly products. The green label products have better demands and higher price realisation. We can develop a strategy to concentrate only on products that are cost-effective and cost-sensitive. At the same time, we must focus on delivering good qualities in time which is possible only with the logistics and infrastructure support.  The Indian government has already started initiatives to have logistic parks and enhance transportation connectivity. Apart from this the development of mega textile parks, and clusters will all be beneficial in reducing the transit time and improving the quality of transportation thereby making logistic management easier and more efficient.

With these developmental changes, we need to also focus on our own manufacturing base as far as various textile and technical textile machines are concerned. There are initiatives under process to develop a complete strategy for textile engineering and machinery manufacturing hub development in India this will be our ultimate game changer strategy as it will help us develop a new innovative product basket for domestic and global markets with complete control on production.

Steps the government should take

If the government can bring in the regulations, for production techniques, infrastructure developments, and logistics support, that would help the entire sector to grow in multifold. There is also a need to address issues of labor supply and structuring policy to safeguard the interests of all stakeholders. At the same time, those who are using techniques for the advanced technology machinery should be given benefits. This will attract more and more businesses to follow the techniques and adoption of advanced machinery. 

Conclusion

So according to me, the sector which we should focus on is technical textiles. Apart from this, we must have a strategy as per the following requirements:

• Domestic market requirement: We must have quality products produced as per different geographical needs and cluster development in order to produce competitive products. The focus must be on sustainable production and recycling of waste generated with modern technologies.

• Global requirement: We must develop country strategies by which we can understand what are the demands of that particular country, which products they will need, how we can be more effective in producing those products, which geographical location we should use to produce those products within our country, how to boost the complete logistics to give timely deliveries to these countries, at the same time, how we can effectively use raw material which is getting produced in various parts of our country and how we can have a complete value chain which can be produced in and around those hubs which would be known as textile hubs, for example, denim city or it can be a towel city or it can be product specific cities for technical textiles or it can be product specific cities for technical textiles.

If we do right thing at the right time with effectiveness of technological advancements then we can certainly achieve our ambitious goal.

Let us strive to achieve impossible!

About the author:

Avinash Mayekar is the Managing Director of SUVIN. He has over 35 years of experience working in consulting firms and various reputed textile companies of India. His main specialisation lies in strategy building, business process re-engineering and technical textiles. Working with a reputed global consulting firm, Mayekar has worked on large spinning projects in India and gained huge overseas experience.