NTC to expand base in the south

The National Textile Corporation (NTC) plans to expand its production capacity in the south.

In the year ending March 31, 2011, about Rs 20 crores worth of yarn was exported from its south Indian mills. Nearly 70 per cent of the spindle capacity of NTC is in the south. NTC has 14 textile mills in the southern states. New building and machinery would be added in six existing mills. Three of these would be in the south – two in Coimbatore and one in Kerala. About 60,000 spindles would be added in the north and 63,000 in the south.

The NTC would invest Rs 250 crores to take the total number of spindles in the southern states to five lakh by the end of March 2012. It now has 4.37 lakh spindles. It would add 32,700 spindles at two textile mills in Coimbatore. The NTC made a Rs 2 crore cash profit in 2010-2011 in the southern states and the value of production was Rs 550 crores as against Rs 275 crores in 2009-2010. The corporation already has yarn export orders for about Rs 5 crores for this year. The corporation is going in for specialty yarn and tapping new export markets like the Latin American countries. Nearly 15 per cent of the spindle age is for compact yarn and another 15 per cent for slub yarn. It proposes to make yarn from dyed fiber too.