3rd Sep ’07 - Economic Times - Delhi
ASHOK Piramal group company Morarjee Textiles is looking at expanding aggressively through brownfield as well as greenfield route. The company is looking at buying brands. It plans to invest at least 150 crore in the next three years in the garment business, which will see three manufacturing facilities come onstream.
“We want to double our garment business every year for the nest three years,” says Morarjee Textiles executive vice-chairman Harsh Piramal.
The Rs 270- crore Morarjee Textile, which supplies fabrics and garments to several marquee brands such as Levi’s Esprit, Woolworth, Polo Ralph Lauren and Marks & Spencer, entered garment business three years ago by establishing its subsidiary Integra Apparels & Textile.
The company has three garment units located in banglore with an annual capacity of 2 million pieces. It wants to raise this to 17 million pieces in three years. A new unit adjacent to the existing facility would go onstream in the next few months.
The company is setting up a greenfield capacity at Tumkur in Karnataka, which will start production in a year’s time. This will come at the cost of Rs 50-60 crore and would churn out 6 million pieces.
Integra Apparel will set up another unit on similar capacity in one of the southern states. “We will choose the location depending on the availability of land. The unit should be realy in a year-an-half,” say Mr Piramal.
The company is also contemplating setting up a high-end intergrated knit units. “We are also looking at acquisition in fabric, garment and brand space. The acquisition could be anywhere between between Rs 10-50 crore,” ay Mr. Piramal.
Morarjee Textiles plans to take its recently acquired Italian brand Men’s Club to other parts of Europe and Japan. The company intends to bring the brand to India in six months. The brand would be made available through Pyramid stores, the Primal group’s retail venture.
Men’s and women’s tops today comprise Integra’s product portfolio. But the company would soon add trousers to it.
In its bid to become more efficient, Morarjee Textiles has hired a ‘time and motion’ consultant, who is helping workers cut the inefficient steps in production.
“The training began two months ago and the effect can already be seen. We will attain 10-15% effieiency in 4-6 month, by when all our 3,000 workers would have been trained,” says Mr. Piramal.
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