Kitex Garments Ltd. has drawn up plans to increase its production capacity by more than 3.5 times to meet increasing demand, according to a top official.
“Currently, we are producing six lakh pieces of finished garments per day for ‘just-borns’ and babies up to 24 months,” said Sabu M. Jacob, chairman and managing director, Kitex Garments. “We have now decided to increase the garment production capacity to 22 lakh pieces per day by 2025.”
This would call for an investment of ₹2,000 crore in a phased manner. The board had so far given permission to invest ₹400 crore in two wholly-owned subsidiaries. The funds would be raised through capital subsidy, internal accruals and debt.
Kitex Group ended FY18 with a revenue of ₹1,350 crore against ₹1,300 crore in FY17. “We did not add any new machinery and all the three units are running at full capacity. We have not yet finalised the year-to-year budget. The fresh investment and machinery for spinning, processing, knitting and sewing will be added from 2018-19 onwards,” he added.
Training workers
“By 2025, we aim to produce 22 lakh pieces of kids garments per day,” said Mr. Jacob. “The entire lot will be exported. You can see marked improvement in production capacity from 2021. By 2022, we hope to reach 60% to 70% of our target. One of the major issues we face is that of training workers.”
On a proposal to set up their fourth unit, Mr. Jacob said earlier they were toying with the idea of setting it up either in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh or Kerala.
“Now, we have five options before us. Kerala and Andhra Pradesh are very aggressive in getting fresh investments and are offering huge tax incentives. We might consider Jharkhand as it announced a textile park and Odisha is giving importance to textile garments. Karnataka has been ruled out due to the present political situation,” he said.
Asked about the possibility of getting skilled labourers in Jharkhand and Odisha, Mr. Jacob said most of the workers were from these places and hence they were available in plenty.
