Full Monforts Interknit line in place in response to the country’s demand for high quality finished fabrics

Things are moving fast following the decision of Indian garment manufacturer International Stitches to backward integrate into fabric processing. At retail level, the company, with its head office in Tirupur, has just launched its Groggy brand for the 16-24-year-olds market in India, and also acquired the licence to produce clothing featuring characters from the global cartoon hit ‘The Simpsons.’

At the same time, it has formed a new subsidiary, Indian Color Care, a newly-built plant at the Sipcot Industrial Growth Centre in Perundurai, some 50km east of Coimbatore. Indian Color Care is equipped with the very latest, state-of-the art European processing machinery, including the first Monforts Interknit line in India.

The company began trading as International Trading Inc., a government-recognised export house and the Indian office of the Canadian Trio Group, to which it still has links. “But we soon realised there was no future in simply outsourcing and saw opportunities to expand into garment making,” explained President, Mr Vishal Kumar. The Indian Stitches garment making-up plant in Tirupur now houses some 400 sewing machines, along with automatic printing and embroidery machines, cutting and slitting and CAD-CAM design stations.

As solely a garment maker, however, the company has recently become frustrated with its lack of control over certain parameters. “Having our own processing plant will mean we can control both fabric quality and lead times,” said Mr Vishal Kumar. “At the moment we can have fabric stocks but we don’t know what the fashion will be. With our customers looking for delivery lead times of 30-40 days, having our own processing means we will be able to cut the gap between fabric and garment production considerably, allowing us to supply the right product at the right time.

“To really compete with China,” he added, “India must have large fabric processing ranges as well as weaving, since the yarn spinning capacity is already in place.” The 2.4 m wide Monforts Interknit line which has just been installed at Indian Color Care is designed to be the ideal non-stop finishing line for the relaxing and compressive shrinking of knitted fabrics in a single process – from cutting open the tubular form through to fabric feed ready for make-up.

It consists of perfectly matched components including a fabric inlet section, edge gluing, stretching field, relaxation drier, levelling field, compressive shrinking unit and fabric delivery section. With this non-stop finishing line, all longitudinal tensions built up in the fabric during the pre-treatment are eliminated as far as possible. The components of line can also be used individually, for natural relaxing shrinking of knitted fabrics in tubular form, for example, or for the compressive shrinking of woven fabrics.

The networking of the Interknit Line with Qualitex automation technology allows it to be controlled by just one machine operator.“This line may be expensive compared to comparable lines from some other companies, but there should be some value put on engineering,” said CEO of Indian Stitches Mr S. Chitambaranathan. “And Monforts machines are excellent in this respect, being high performing and very stable”.

Mr Chitambaranathan added that he was surprised the Monforts Interknit technology had taken some time to reach the Indian market.

“Maybe the market has not been in full swing, but we are sure this line here will be the model for other companies coming up,” he said. “The concept has proven good for the woven industry, but this is the first mission for Indian knits.” “The Toptex 7000 compactor, with its ‘felt and belt’ treatment,” Mr Chitambaranathan said, “was an important factor in improving fabric quality.”

“The market now expects a lot of properties in respect of hand and feel and sheen, which this unit will allow us to provide,” he added. Indian Stitches does not intend to stop with this expansion and is currently looking at potentially entering the specialised field of warp knitting.

“Right now India is installing circular knitting lines everywhere,” said Mr Kumar, “but there is a big shortage in warp knitted production, which will be particularly useful for sports and active wear.”

The company is seeking either to possibly acquire or partner with an existing European company that is currently active in this field. For the future, Mr Kumar concluded that India’s domestic market for clothing would become increasingly important. “At the moment some 95% of what we produce is exported, but in the next few years I believe it will get closer to fifty-fifty,” he said.

Monforts Interknit line