Date:14/02/2006 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/02/14/stories/2006021402480200.htm

Back Coimbatore firm launches branded cotton yarn

G. Gurumurty

Coimbatore , Feb. 13

SCM Textile Spinners, part of the Rs 500-crore flagship company TCS Textiles Pvt Ltd, is promoting the cotton yarn brand, `Madras Yarn,' using the group's blue peacock logo. (The logo represents the quality standards for 100 per cent cotton yarns.)

The company has launched the yarn brand on Friday at its Avinashi plant. "We'll initially associate the `Madras Yarn' brand with the 60s count yarn for the woven sector and we will focus on the export market," said Mr K. Vinayakam, Executive Director of SCM Textile Spinners.

Mr Vinayakam said that unlike the textile mills, which are centred on specific count yarns ( brands are named after such mills), his textile unit currently produces yarns ranging from the 30s count to the 100s count. Thus branding is needed to distinguish the quality elements that go into the manufacture of yarns. Weavers, especially those producing shirting fabrics with finer count yarns, are concerned about the quality standards of the yarns they purchase. Thus, branding of yarn will bring about quality assurance and timely supplies.

The branding exercise is part of TCS group's expansion of textile manufacturing operations at SCM Textile Spinners and its garment company, SCM Creations (to be shortly renamed as SCM Garments Pvt Ltd). While the group is expanding SCM Textile Spinners' production capacity by doubling the spindlage from the present 52,800 to 1.05 lakh at a cost of Rs 100 crore, it is planning a massive capacity addition at its garment unit.

SCM Textile Spinners' yarn production is to go up to 35 tonnes a day after the expansion by 2007. It has also proposed to induct a compact spinning facility for 6,000 spindles, which will enable the company to increase the manufacture of value-added yarns whose share in total yarn production will go up to 30 per cent, Mr Vinayakam said. The spinning unit's daily yarn production at present is 13 tonnes, comprising both weaving and knitting yarns and it exports 50 per cent of the yarn produced. The unit allocates 25 per cent of its yarns to the group's garment unit in Tirupur for in-house consumption.