Raymond aims to be outsourcing giant

Raymond Limited on Monday inaugurated two state-of-the-art garment facilities in Bangalore "" the jeans wear facility 'Everblue Apparel limited' and the shirting plant 'Celebration Apparel Limited'.With this Raymonds is looking ahead to become an integrated solutions provider and a one-stop shop for all its customers.

The company is moving up the value chain and aims to become a global outsourcing giant in the near future.

The Everblue plant is the forward integration of its denim fabric division which will enable it to offer a complete solution to its customers for jeanswear. The Celebration facility will enable forward integration to Raymond's shirt manufacturing facility, allowing it to export shirts to Japan and Europe.

The Everblue apparel facility, with an investment of Rs 45 crore, will manufacture around 3 million pairs of jeans a year. A part of this will be exported to areas like Europe and Japan.The Everblue facility has unique features like computerised cutting, automatic sewing, laser blasting, spraying and sand blasting and a washing unit.

"With our investment in Everblue park we are moving up the value chain by being an integrated supplier of fabrics and garments, thus supplying a fully packaged garment to our customers," said Gautam Singhania, chairman and managing director, Raymond Ltd.

Raymond Limited has decided to increase is shirt producing capacity to 3000 per day in the first phase with the inauguration of its first plant at Celebration. The second phase will be implemented by 2006 and this will increase the capacity to produce shirts to 6000 shirts per day.

The company is investing Rs 14 crore in this project and has a technical collaboration with a shirt manufacturing company Flex Japan Co ltd.

Raymond limited has already signed a 50:50 joint venture 'Raymond Fedora' in June this year with the Italian woollen fabric manufacturer Xanificio Fedora.

Apart from the technical expertise from the Italian firm, it will increase the manufacturing capacity from 15 lakh metres per year to 25 lakh metres, of which two-third will be exported.