Demand for machinery may slow down for at least 6 months
Surat-based Sunrise Imports & Exports Co is a
manufacturer and exporter of weaving and embroidery machines. The company is
also the distributor for Shanghai Yinchun Machinery. CEO Manoj Sorathiya
discusses how the current COVID-19 crisis is impacting the textile machinery
manufacturers and suppliers.
The current COVID-19 crisis has brought the entire textiles-apparel production, supply chain, and retail sales to a grinding halt. How do you see this impacting textile machinery manufacturers and suppliers? How is your supply chain being hit? Are you facing cancellation of orders?
Yes, the current Covid-19 crisis has hit a lot to the textile machinery manufacturers and suppliers. Uncertainty about the future, closure of apparel stores and almost all other businesses around the world, has brought down the demand of fabrics, which is not going to increase in future for at least 6 months. Because of this perception in entire value chain of the textile industry, machinery demand is very low. We are not getting any new inquires about any kind of textile machinery. Thankfully we are not facing cancellation of existing orders. Many customers have requested us to wait for shipping of their goods till further confirmation. As a result, inventories in our workshop remain very high nowadays.
Post lockdown, what are the problems you foresee and how do you plan to help your clients with respect to after-sales service and spare parts?
Post lockdown, demand for machinery may slow down for at least 6 months till the entire value chain is not reestablished. At present, we are in touch with all our customers regarding how to handle the machinery during lockdown and how to restart them once the lockdown is over. We are well equipped with spare parts and are ready to face any kind of after sales service challenge.
What do you think the government can do to further ease pain of textile machinery manufacturing companies? Any thoughts on rallying together as a key niche of the value chain to arrive at some workable plan to get through these difficult times?
We expect the demand of Indian apparel and textile made ups to increase after this pandemic is over and so we must be prepared for it.
For this the government should play a vital role. We are expecting the release of the pending ‘Textile Upgradation Fund’ so that the industry gets some relaxation. Once work is resumed, all sector of textile industry will face working capital issue. So, we hope government will guide financial institutes to provide funding on minimum interest rates with more moratorium period and payback time. We are expecting launch of the pending ‘Textile Policy’ as early as possible, which should increase TUF by atleast 25 per cent on capital goods investment and also resume group work shed subsidy. Thus, the industry can attract further investment and old machinery can be upgraded to compete with the international market.
Published on: 27/04/2020
DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
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