Knit dyeing  is in high demand in the garment and sportswear industries

Vipul group of companies currently serves clients across a broad spectrum of industries ranging from Textile, Paint, Printing Ink, Cosmetics & Food Industry, Plastic and several other industries and has presence in both local and international markets. Mihir V Shah, Executive Director, Vipul Organics, discusses the emerging trends and the global scenario of dyeing and processing industry with Divya Shetty.

What are the new dyeing and processing methods?

Over the years, the dying methods in the textile industry have been exhaust dyeing, cold pad batch, pad dry steam, etc. This has been done by using Reactive Dyes, Direct Dyes, Acid dyes etc. These traditional dyeing process needs a lot of water for the application and invites a big water management problem

The new dyestuffs are now getting innovated and popularised such as Multifunctional Dyes which need significantly less water compared to the traditional dyestuffs. Nowadays the trend has changed and knit dyeing is very much in demand which is taking care of major garment industry, sportswear industry across the globe.

The use of Pigments is now increasing exponentially for textile dyeing and printing. Pigments are replacing Reactive Dyes in the textile printing and dyeing. Pigment dyeing/ printing reduces huge amount of waste water and ensures clean operation for the processors. This also gives a lot of direct saving to the processors when they save cost of handling the effluent. The use of pigment also gives better fastness properties to the fabric and higher stability of the fabric.

Digital printing is also the new concept which is getting more and more popular. Digital printing ink is manufactured using pigments as well as dyes. This type of printing involves almost zero effluent in the process and it gives vivid, vibrant and personalised designs. Digital printing helps improve the rubbing fastness with a much higher accuracy of print. It also plays a significant role in cost saving in labour, material cost and offers highest printing speed. Currently the important textile countries are: India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey, Mexico and Indonesia.

Along with the dyestuffs, pigment, digital inks, there is a lot of innovation happening with the textile Auxiliaries (functional chemicals) to enhance the dyeing property such as fixation, good fastness property, good washing fastness, good light fastness etc. Newer Auxiliaries are enhancing the overall performance of dyes and feel of the garment/ fabric.

Where does India stand in terms of adoption of new technologies?

In India, there is a major shift seen in textile printing from dyes to pigments. In terms of digital inks as well, India is adapting to the newer printing techniques by investing in newer printing machines and concept of printing. Surat is a front runner in adapting the digital inks concept for fine designs and printing. However, we are just at the beginning of this change.

What can we learn from global dyeing and processing manufacturers?

Big textile houses in India need to step up and be more adaptive to newer ideas, innovation and be open to accepting newer technologies which indirectly is going to be very beneficial for them in the long run. We should be open to trying and experiment with newer Auxiliaries to enhance the performance of pigments/ dyes on fabric. The use of pigments in the printing needs to be increased to avoid water pollution and decrease the effluent in a big way. Vipul Organics is a front runner in leading this change to reduce waste water in textile industry which is one of the largest consumers of fresh water. It should be an endeavour of every textile unit in India to reduce waste water while getting equal or better performance of Textiles.

What was the company’s performance in the calendar year 2022?

Vipul Organics has one of the largest pigment dispersion capacities in India. We produce Pigment powder from which we produce our pigment dispersions which are widely used in textile printing and dyeing. This backward and forward integration helps us produce the right quality of products for the textile industry. Our pigment dispersion brand SunPrint is used Textile printing and dyeing and is one of the leading brands in India. Though this year has been very tough due to a slump in demand in the textile sector, we utilised the time to develop a robust network of channel partners to penetrate every major hub in India for catering to the textile industry.

We are one of the pioneers and leaders in some unique products in textile industry such as Napthols, Fast bases and Fast Salts which is used for African prints, Batik prints. This technology is fading in India but is a unique printing technology which gives much enhanced and bright prints as compared to the traditional Reactive/ Direct dyes. This is the reason why there are several pockets across the globe who still prefer to dye the garment with our Napthols/ Fast Bases over dyes. For the Indonesian market we have the largest market share for this series of products. In India our brand SunThol is very famous and is available since last 50 years.