Cotton pad plant for Karnataka

Precot Meridian, a leading Indian manufacturer of yarns and fabrics with annual revenues of over US$120 million, is setting up a new plant to manufacture hygiene care products.

The per capita consumption of all nonwovens in India is less than 100 grams, whereas in the US and Western Europe it’s around  3-3.5 kilograms. Total Indian nonwovens consumption in 2011 was  240,000 tons and nonwovens production was 170,000 tons.

There are few major players established as yet, and 78% of all consumption goes into industrial end-uses. All consumer disposables consumption is just 53,000 tons. Growth, however, is likely to be over 20% in the coming years.

All of this suggests a huge opportunity for ambitious companies like Prescot Meridian – especially since India’s production chains, practices and markets are not as well-ingrained as elsewhere.

Indian companies entering the nonwovens market can avoid the dilemmas now facing established manufacturing bases and there is the opportunity to have sustainable practices and processes from the outset.

Intending to become an important player on the cosmetic pad market, Precot has now partnered with VMI Holland BV which will supply several of it’s new ACE 300, fully automatic and compact pad production and packing machines to Precot Meridian, as well as an HCI high output machine.

The Dutch machinery supplier’s VMI Product Handling Systems division (former EBM) is a market leader in high capacity cotton pad machinery for converts cotton blankets into cotton pad stacks. The ACE 300, VMI's latest machine was designed especially for this nonwoven market. It incorporates the current state-of-the-art techniques including solid and rigid mechanics, low maintenance, easy operatiol and economic performance. Swift change-over to a large variety of pad shapes by switching product related parts ensures a highly flexible production level.   

“The prototype of the ACE 300 was delivered to a German company last year and turned out to be a great success,” said VMI sales manager Peter Alink. “In the meantime VMI has already received orders for a number of machines, including the units recently sold for Precot.”  

The new Precot Meridian plant is being built in the Southern state of Karnataka in India.

“This greenfield project will be an integrated plant, with processing, nonwoven lines and finishing machines, said Precot CEO Ashok Kulkarni. The major machinery has been ordered and we will start with trial production in January 2013. We look forward to a fruitful cooperation with VMI.”

Pictured (left to right) are: Peter Alink, VMI, Prashanth Chandran and Ashok Kulkarni, Precot Meridian and Gert de Gooyer, of VMI Holland.