Cotton King plans greenfield plant at Baramati

Readymade garment manufacturer Cotton King has planned to set up a greenfield manufacturing facility at Baramati (90 km from Pune) where it will consolidate all its activities and processing.

The facility, coming up on a three-acre plot will be complete and operational in April 2008, Pardeep Marathe managing director said today. The company will invest Rs 5 crore to build the facility that will house the main tailoring lines as well as units for garment pre-washing or wrinkle free processing and will have an installed capacity of 4000 garments per shift.

"We currently do these activities in different locations in Pune and now wish to consolidate in one place, " Marathe said, adding that the centralised facilities will help the company's plans to expand across the state of Maharashtra and eventually nationally.

Cotton King shot into prpminence a decade ago with a promise of 100% cotton shirts and is now a well known men's apparel brand in Western Maharashtra. The company is now looking at taking the brand on the sate level, with outlets in Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai and Nagpur, Marathe said.

He was talking to the media after a function to launch the company's new range of shirts made from Cording - a specially devised fabric that gives the visual feel of corduroy is spite of being a plain material. Marathe said the fabric has been devised by the company's research and development team and made in Mumbai by its select processing house partners.
Elaborating on the company's expansion plans Marathe said the present network of 11 outlets will be expanded to 20 by  the end of the year and to 30 in the following year.  Cotton King logged a turnover of 18 crore in the year ended December 2007, and has estimated the sales to rise to Rs 40 crore when the expansion will be complete in the year 2009, Marathe said.

The company will go national only thereafter, when it will seek the financial muscle of private equity partners or venture capital  companies, he said.