Paresh Dattani: Don’t worry, succession is already taken care of here

Sanathan Textiles is one of the leading yarn manufacturers in India, operating across three key segments: polyester filament yarns, 100 per cent cotton yarns, and yarns for technical textiles. With this diverse product portfolio, the company caters to a wide range of applications and end uses. Their yarns are used in suiting, shirting, garments, sarees, and dress materials. Sanathan Textiles also produces yarns for sportswear, gym wear, and home textiles—supplying materials for bath mats, towels, curtains, cushions, carpets, and more. Additionally, they manufacture yarns for backpacks, soft luggage fabrics, seat belts, car roofing, car upholstery, parachute fabrics, shoe uppers, flex fabrics used in advertising hoardings, and other technical applications.

Currently, their polyester filament yarn division contributes approximately 77 per cent of the total revenue, with an annual production capacity of around 200,000 tonne. The cotton yarn segment operates at a capacity of 132,000 spindles, producing about 14,000 tonne per annum. The technical textile yarn segment accounts for about 5 per cent of their business, with an annual production of roughly 9,000 tonne. In this exclusive interview, Paresh Dattani, MD and Chairman, and Sammir Dattani, Director, Sanathan Textiles, share with Divya Shetty their future vision and the breadth of solutions offered across textile segments.

The company has introduced innovative products like S-Flex, which combines polyester’s benefits with exceptional stretch, eliminating the need for spandex. Could you elaborate on the R&D process behind such innovations and their impact on the market?

Sammir Dattani: Stretch yarns are a very exciting space. If you notice, most of the apparel and garments we wear—high-street clothes from brands like Zara, H&M, Pantaloons, or Westside—now have a certain amount of stretch. There are many advantages to this. It gives the wearer comfort of motion and movement, better shape and fit, and shape retention after washing and wearing. Because of these benefits, many brands are now using stretch fabrics.

We started making stretch yarns a couple of years ago by adding Lycra or spandex to our yarns. This allows the fabric manufacturer to skip additional processing—they can simply buy stretch yarns and create blended fabrics as needed.

With time and innovation, we recently launched our product S-Flex, a self-stretch, four-way stretch polyester filament yarn. Here, we don’t add any spandex. By modifying the properties of the polyester filament yarn itself, we achieve four-way stretch. This makes the fabric stretchable, lighter, easier to process, and more cost-effective, since no new elements like spandex are added.

This product was developed in collaboration with our customers and through global R&D insights. We constantly track trends to understand where fashion is heading. In many ways, fashion starts with yarns—the beginning of the textile chain. What we make goes into garments, suiting, shirting, etc., so we must stay aligned with what customers and brands want.

We produce a wide range of coloured yarns using dope-dyed technology. Now we also offer coloured stretch yarns, adding value for our customers. We make anti-wicking, moisture-management yarns for sportswear, and now we offer those in stretch variants too—with colour. This eliminates conventional dyeing, adds comfort and performance features, and helps reduce water pollution and carbon footprint by eliminating extra processes.

Sanathan Textiles caters to various segments within technical textiles, including agrotextiles, geotextiles, and indutech. How does the company address the unique demands of these diverse applications?

Sammir: Technical textiles is a very exciting space. It’s one of our youngest divisions, started in 2017. There is a lot of push from the government for technical textiles because this segment has tremendous growth potential in India. We are quite new to it, and India as a country is also relatively new in the technical textiles space. Over the coming years, reports suggest that the technical textile segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15 to 17 per cent.

There are only a handful of yarn manufacturers in this segment. While many companies are involved in making fabrics and applications for technical textiles, very few focus on yarn manufacturing.

We make different types of yarns for technical textiles. Our yarns are used to produce geogrid fabric for road and dam construction, conveyor belts, safety slings, deep sea fishing nets, marine ropes, seat belt fabrics, and airbag fabrics. These are some of the major industrial applications.

There are also high-end applications such as premium luggage fabrics, outdoor awning fabrics, fire-retardant suits, and bulletproof jacket fabrics. These are the different types of applications in the technical textile segment for our products.

With the upcoming greenfield project in Punjab set to double the Polyester Filament Yarn capacity, how does Sanathan plan to meet the rising demand in the textile industry?

Sammir: Our current capacity is fully utilised. We run our facility 365 days, 24/7, so we are fully sweating our assets. It was time for us to grow because the financials of the company are healthy. India is growing — it’s a fast-growing market with fast-growing demand. So we decided it was time for Sanathan also to grow. Looking at the demand, and since we are fully sold out and our capacity is fully optimised and utilised, we decided what we should do next.

Historically, we have periodically grown all three of our yarn businesses — polyester filament, cotton, and technical — one after the other, to ensure consistent company-level growth without putting too much pressure on any one segment. So, we decided to grow our polyester filament yarn segment.

Currently, we make two lakh tonne per annum. When we were analysing the data and deciding the next steps, we saw huge growth in the last four to five years in North India. Today, the polyester filament yarn industry is about a 4.5 million ton market in India, and around 1 million tonne is consumed in North India, which is a growing market. There is no local supplier for this product today — everything is made on the western side of India, between Silvassa and Gujarat. We already have customers in North India who we’ve been supplying to for more than 10 to 12 years. So, we are in the process of setting up a greenfield expansion in Punjab, to be closer to our North Indian customers — mainly in Delhi NCR, Panipat, Ludhiana, and Amritsar. These are the key textile regions in North India that consume polyester filament yarn.

We are setting up a new capacity that will begin operations around end of May or June 2025. The entire capacity is designed to produce 3,50,000 tonne of polyester filament yarn. It’s a fully integrated facility. Inputs will be raw materials like petrochemicals, PTA, and energy. We will integrate polymerisation to make our own base POY and FDY, then convert it into texturised yarns. We will offer a wide variety of products based on market demand and customer needs, supplying different end-user applications.

In the first phase, we will produce 2,50,000 tonne, and in the second phase, we will add another 1,00,000 tonne. The entire project is planned for 3,50,000 tonne. We will more than double our current yarn capacity — from two lakh to five and a half lakh tonne eventually.

Currently, all three yarn businesses are located in Silvassa. This is a bigger project, and we are entering a new region. By going closer to the customer, we aim to become their preferred supplier.

What is your perspective on its current state of the Indian Textile industry, and how is Sanathan Textiles positioning itself to adapt and thrive?

Sammir: Textile has been a very age-old industry of India. Even at a global level, India is known for its textiles around the world. So definitely, we have ample scope for growth in the coming years. Domestic consumption is growing rapidly because we have the youngest and the largest population. Even internationally, with the kind of tariff trade wars and the Bangladesh disturbance, the Indian textile industry has a great opportunity to increase its market share globally.

What initiatives has Sanathan Textiles undertaken to ensure environmentally conscious production processes?

Paresh Dattani: We have done ZLD (Zero Liquid Discharge) in terms of wastewater in Silvasa right now. We have a lot of ISO certifications to ensure sustainability. The packaging is all GRS certified, so Global Recycled Standards are certified. No liquid discharge is happening. Whatever water is used is treated inside the plant and consumed within the plant for gardening purposes and other uses.

When we talk about Punjab, we will not be using gas for heating, but rice husk. That is a very key milestone in terms of sustainability for us in Punjab.

We are negotiating a contract with a very big company. They’re a listed company and the largest supplier of agricultural waste in the country. We are in talks, and by next week, we should finalise that with them.

What impact do you anticipate from Trump’s revised tariff rates on your business operations?

Paresh: In the next two, two and a half years, we already have a plan laid out, because we are doing this capex, this polymerisation plant. We are also adding a cotton yarn unit which is going to adding about 50 per cent capacity to our existing cotton units, our yarns for technical textile, which we add about 9000 tonne per annum, We are doubling that capacity. So this is already planned out. This is already laid out. It is there in. The thing besides that, we are also having a moving ahead in post that we need to add value further in. So the next step would be more than just adding capacity. We want to add, add products where we charge for the value to our product. So that’s what we are working on, which will be exuding, probably in the next couple of months.

What key strategies or philosophies have driven Sanathan Textiles’ journey from legacy to leadership?

Paresh: Traditional industries often face the problem of lack of succession. Most younger kids don’t want to get into industries like textiles, chemicals, etc. That’s why I say textile companies particularly face this issue. I always tell my investors, ‘Don’t worry, succession is already taken care of here.’