Commodity Yarns or Cave Man Textiles

If you happen to uncover a Large Stone in India, then most likely a Textile Mill will show up. Indian Entrepreneurs love Textile Mills and besides 3000++ , more are always on the way. But this phenomenon is not just in India, it is spread across Indonesia and Thailand.

Most would joke in South India, that Bar Owners have now diversified into Textile Mills .

Such is the simplicity of the business, that with little extra money in bank with a business man and next thing , you get to know that he is a Mill Owner.

Some of these mill owners do not know, which if the front of the machine or which is the back of the machine. However, year after year, the number of spindles keep growing and next year , if you visit him, the mill has grown to 100,000+ spindles.

Most mill, say 90% run few counts like 20s, 30s and 40s and some have twisting capacities. For polyester DTY yarns, it is only 150 den or 300 den . Polyester staple Fibre is essentially 1.2 d x 38 mm.

Largely the textile across the globe is covered with these few yarns.

Therefore, the whole business of textiles is just about converting PSF or Cotton , or PTA to few textile counts.

The conversion cost is also known to the security guard on the front gate. So, as long as you can wind yarn on the cone, then already you are up and running.

Commodity yarns as these are, can be best described as Cave Man Textiles. Day in and day night, the same routine and same cycle to roll out bundles of yarns.

The most interesting thing about these mills/ plants is that despite running commodity yarns, none of them understands that at the end Profitability of such a business is largely dependent on the Productivity and if you don't push your machines to run at the highest speeds, there is no way, that at the end of the year, you can find a fat black bottom line.

Every 5% gain in speeds on the Ring Frame is a direct profit of 5% to the company. Unless and Until each year, the company gains in productivity, there is little chance that it has room for survival in coming time. All other cost will go up by minimum 5% each year and same is not matched with productivity profits, the company is up for grabs.

Which also means, unless and until the company regularly invests into machines which will yield higher outputs, the laggard assets will only loose out. Most cost in a mill are fixed and the Top line is largely the price of market x output. Market prices for commodities in a global space are not just cut throat, but volcanic.

In a kind of Cave Man Textiles, the job is largely production management with very little incentive on development and creativity. However, best production managers are those, who can drive the machines much much higher then the known limits to the industry and the machine configuration.

Quality in commodity is a very relative term and as long as the yarn runs perfectly well on the user machine, most other attributes are academic. Only for a certain set of customers, where special quality is managed and higher prices realized,perhaps, machines can be tweaked.

Another interesting thing about commodity yarns is that , say, if the plant produces 150 denier all round the year, then allow certain set of machines to run the same yarn with same settings and same speeds year after year. These machines will give yarn quality, which no one can match in the market. Somehow, machines love consistency and have a tacit " Do Not Disturb board " which most of us fail to read.

Cave Man Textiles are still a great engine of growth in developing economies and many cave time machine makers are happy serving these mill.