Keyur Panchal: We don’t push catalogue machines — we engineer solutions.

Rabatex Industries, headquartered in Ahmedabad, India, was founded in 1962 and is today one of the country’s leading manufacturers of weaving preparatory machinery and intra-mill material handling solutions. The Group operates four modern manufacturing plants supported by a network of dedicated component-supplier units, employs over 300 people, and serves various customers across more than 38 countries. Rabatex is recognised as the largest manufacturer of sectional warping machines in India, with a domestic market share that has consistently stayed more than 65 per cent over the last decade. Keyur Panchal, Executive Director, Rabatex Industries, shares what factors are currently driving their demand and emerging trends they foresee shaping the industry.

Could you briefly tell about your company’s core areas of expertise?

Our core areas of expertise span high-speed computerised sectional warping machines, single-end sample warping machines, single-end and multi-end sizing systems, and a wide portfolio of customised creels — including specialised mono-filament creels, carbon creels and high-tenacity yarn creels for technical textiles. We also offer a complete textile material handling and storage range covering motorised beam trolleys, beam pallet trolleys, warp beam carriers, cloth roll carriers, beam-storage systems and our flagship RAPID Vertical Lift Module. To date we have more than 3,600 installations of sectional warpers and over 6,000+ installations of material handling and storage equipment worldwide.

Our end-user industries cover the full weaving universe — cotton, denim, shirting, suiting, home textiles and made-ups, synthetic and blended fabrics, and an increasingly important share of technical textiles in agro, geo, medical, automotive, defence, filtration and composite applications. Our USPs are clear: deep process understanding built over six decades, in-house R&D and engineering for tailor-made configurations, European-class build quality at Indian responsiveness and cost, and a service network that treats every installation as a long-term partnership. A 43 per cent repeat-order rate is, for us, the truest validation of that promise.

What factors are currently driving the demand for your products and solutions? What differentiates your company from competitors in the market?

Demand today is being driven by three simultaneous shifts in the global weaving industry. First, mills everywhere are upgrading from older direct and beam warping setups to high-speed computerised sectional warpers, because modern rapier, airjet and projectile looms demand far better warp quality, tension uniformity and consistency. Second, sample warping has become a strategic capability — the speed at which a mill can develop and approve a new design directly determines its export competitiveness, and our single-end sample warpers have become a standard tool for design houses and exporters. Third, creel customisation are no longer commodity purchases; buyers want recipe management, energy savings, and creels engineered for the exact yarn they run, especially as technical textiles expand globally. Material handling and vertical storage, meanwhile, have moved from ‘nice-to-have’ to essential as mills compete on space, safety and labour productivity.

What differentiates Rabatex is the combination of process depth, customisation and reliability. We do not push standard catalogue machines — each project is engineered around the customer’s yarn, fabric and shop-floor reality. Our R&D has produced genuine industry firsts, including the Mother Mono Yarn Split Sectional Warper that eliminates the conventional cop-winding stage in synthetic warping altogether. We back every installation with proactive after-sales support, remote diagnostics and field service. And finally, six decades of focus exclusively on weaving preparatory and material handling means we understand the weaver’s economics, not just the weaver’s machine — and that empathy shows up in every design decision.

What advantages does India offer to the global textile and apparels (T&A) industry?

India offers a combination of advantages that very few countries can match. We have one of the world’s most complete textile value chains — from fibre and yarn through fabric, processing, garmenting and made-ups — sitting inside a single geography, which gives global buyers genuine supply-chain resilience. We are among the largest producers of cotton, man-made fibres and silk in the world, and our weaving and processing capacity is enormous. Layered on top of that is a large, young and increasingly skilled workforce, and an engineering base that supplies textile machinery, components and software both domestically and globally.

The policy environment has added significant momentum. The PLI scheme for textiles, the National Technical Textiles Mission, the PM MITRA mega textile parks, and a range of state-level incentives have all pushed investment into modern, large-scale, technology-intensive units. At the same time, global buyers are actively diversifying away from single-country sourcing under a ‘China-plus-one’ approach, and India is one of the most credible beneficiaries of that shift. For T&A buyers, India today offers scale, integration, technology, cost competitiveness and policy stability — a rare combination that positions the country to capture a much larger share of global textile and apparel trade in the years ahead.

Can you highlight some of your recent innovations and launches?

Our most defining recent innovation has been the Mother Mono Yarn Split Sectional & Direct Warpers. Its 160-end creel splits each end into 12 filaments and feeds them directly onto the warping beam, completely bypassing the traditional cop-winding stage in synthetic mother yarn warping. The result is a step-change in productivity, energy use, labour requirement and waste. We are also the first to design a single warping machine that can switch seamlessly between mother yarn and regular filament modes — toggling between Creel 1 and Creel 2 — giving mills the kind of flexibility that the synthetic weaving segment has long needed.

Alongside this we have launched advanced fabric sampling solutions that were extremely well received at ITMA 2023, drawing strong inquiries from European and Latin American mills. We have expanded our technical-textile creel range with specialised Mono Filament Creels, Carbon Creels and high-tension creels suited to glass, aramid and basalt yarns. On the digital side, our latest sectional warpers come with PLC-based intelligent controls, large touch HMIs, on-board recipe management for hundreds of patterns, electronic stop motions on every end, fault diagnostics, production reporting and remote-access connectivity. The RAPID Vertical Lift Module has also seen continued enhancement, now offered in unit heights up to 24 metres and tray capacities up to 1,000 kg, bringing genuine warehouse-grade automation onto the textile shop floor.

What emerging trends do you foresee shaping the industry in the coming years?

Five trends, in my view, will shape the next decade. First, technical textiles — agro, geo, medical, automotive, defence, filtration and composite reinforcements — will move from a niche segment to a meaningful share of global textile output, driving demand for purpose-built preparatory machinery. Second, smart manufacturing will become the new baseline rather than a premium feature; recipe management, real-time production monitoring, predictive maintenance and ERP-connected machines will be standard expectations on every shop floor.

Third, sustainability will increasingly be defined in operational terms — yarn savings, chemical reduction, energy efficiency and waste avoidance — rather than as a separate compliance exercise. Fourth, global supply chains will continue to diversify, opening up new manufacturing geographies in South and South-East Asia, Africa, Latin America and parts of Europe, all of whom need modern preparatory machinery. And fifth, intra-mill automation — from beam handling to vertical storage to integrated material flow — will become as important as the weaving machines themselves, because that is where the next layer of productivity is hiding. Manufacturers who address all five together, not in silos, will lead the next decade.

How significant are exports to your overall business?

Exports are a strategically critical part of Rabatex’s business and a fast-growing share of our order book. We currently serve customers in more than 38 countries across Asia, Africa, America, the Middle East and parts of Europe, and the international story for Indian textile machinery has never looked stronger. At ITMA 2023 our booth received visitors from over 48 countries — and remarkably, around 80% of those visitors came from non-Asian markets, with particularly strong engagement from Turkey, Brazil, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Italy and Poland. That mix tells us how decisively global buyers are now evaluating Indian machinery on equal terms with European peers.

Beyond the topline contribution, exports also strengthen us in ways that domestic demand alone cannot. They sharpen our engineering, expose us to a wider variety of yarn and fabric challenges, and push our quality, documentation and service standards continuously upward. Every demanding overseas project leaves the company stronger for the next one.

What are your company’s growth plans for the near future — capacity expansion, R&D, diversification, exports growth?

Our near-term growth plan is built around four parallel tracks. On capacity, we are expanding our manufacturing infrastructure to support both higher domestic demand and the rising share of export orders, while deepening our component-supplier ecosystem around the plant to keep lead times tight. On R&D, we will continue to invest aggressively in technical textile preparatory machinery, digitalisation of our existing portfolio, and intelligent material handling. Technical textiles in particular is a domain where we expect a much larger share of our order book to come from in the years ahead.

On diversification, the RAPID Vertical Lift Module has shown us that our engineering, controls and automation strengths translate well beyond textiles, and we see warehousing and intra-plant automation as a meaningful adjacent growth area for the Group over time. And on exports, the plan is straightforward — be present in every important market through service and spares partnerships, participate consistently at flagship shows like ITM, ITMA and India ITME, and build long-term relationships with customers in Turkey, Europe, Latin America, Africa and South-East Asia. The overarching ambition is simple: to be the most complete, most reliable and most technology-forward partner for the weaving preparatory and material handling needs of any mill, anywhere in the world.