Textile major Arvind Ltd anticipates that the signing of the India-UK trade deal will work to its advantage and help increase its exports to the United Kingdom (UK) by ₹400 crore in the coming years, effectively doubling its current export volumes to the country in Europe.
“Currently, India does about $1 billion exports of garments to the UK. With this, the business should at a minimum double as we are at a relative advantage to our nearest competitor. So all efforts to re-prioritise effort towards winning in the UK market will now commence. Both India and Arvind stand to gain from this,” said Punit Lalbhai, vice-chairman of Gujarat-based Arvind Ltd during an investors’ call held earlier this week.
Arvind currently exports ₹200 crore worth of goods to the UK and the trade deal with India is expected to unlock more opportunities for textile exporters in India.
“UK business has always been a garmenting business. Because of historical reasons, the UK was never a big opportunity. Now that we are increasing our garmenting capacity and with the India-UK alignment, the scenario has changed. We are putting the right teams in place (for the UK business) and it will benefit the garment business as well as the Advanced Materials Division (AMD) business,” he said, adding that the company already has customers for its human-protection products in the UK.
The textile manufacturer has also proposed to increase its AMD capacity by an additional 40 per cent to meet the demands from the US, middle-east and the UK markets. “We are expanding both our industrial and our human protection (product) capacity. We are also increasing the shifts in which our factories will be working. By next quarter, a couple of factories will be running a second shift and we are putting up one more greenfield factory for human protection (products). So, there is a lot of capacity ramp up,” Lalbhai said, adding that the present capacity utilisation has gone beyond 100 per cent.
“We are on track to increase the (AMD) capacity by 20 per cent by the end of this year and another 20 per cent in the next financial year. Demand from the US is the largest and there is an increase in demand from the middle east and from the UK,” he added.
The human protection division of the company manufacturers a range of specialised clothing and accessories like flame retardant wear, high-visibility industrial work-wear, masks, etc to protect personnel engaged in sectors having harsh working environments like Oil and Gas, Steel, fire-fighting, rail and road construction, healthcare, defence and security.
The company, which received a ₹200 crore order from Vande Bharat train programme, said that the AMD division will service the order which will be executed over four years. Lalbhai said that Arvind will provide interior fittings for the coaches of Vande Bharat trains which includes ceiling and side-panels, partitions, doors, flooring panels and toilets which are all made of composites which are strong, yet light in weight. “About 5-7 per cent of the material requirement for every coach (for the trains) will be serviced by us. This could be from the AMD division,” he added.
