Rags to riches
Lantor of austraLia was a struggling Melbourne manufacturer that its British owner was about to close. It made a range of textiles, including stiffeners for shirt collars and cuffs and car-boot trims for the automotive sector, but sales weren’t great.
Nevertheless, its good business bones were visible to its managing director, Phillip Butler, who staged a management buyout in 2000 then set about transforming the company, renaming it Textor Technologies.
At the time, only about 20 per cent of the business focused on manufacturing technical textiles such as wound dressings and medical swabs. But the bank wasn’t prepared to lend money if it was still making textiles for garments or the car industry so Textor Technologies had to pivot towards the technical end of the textile spectrum.
There was a stroke of luck in 2002 when the Australian dollar took a tumble and the local arm of global giant Kimberly- Clark was forced to take a long, hard look at its supply chain, as importing products had become prohibitively expensive. Could Textor Technologies manufacture the wicking material that stops nappy leakage?
Yes. But there was one small catch. “They gave us the formula but wouldn’t tell us how to make it,” says Butler. His team analysed it and “tore half the factory apart” but they eventually cracked the code and, by 2006, were supplying Kimberly- Clark across Asia. A company that was about to be killed offff is now a major exporter and textiles innovator.
Butler, who now chairs the company, explains that a research collaboration between Textor Technologies, CSIRO and Kimberly- Clark then led to the creation of a new-generation 3D composite material that was ideal for newborn babies’ nappies.
Textor Technologies now exports to 14 countries (80 per cent of its revenue is from overseas), has its own development team of 20 engineers and is experiencing “signifificant fifinancial growth”. It has also introduced robotic manufacturing and technology across the organisation, recognising, says Butler, that “modern manufacturing is about capital, innovation, technology and creativity”.
The company is also investing in research and development and partnering with CSIRO and Monash, Swinburne and RMIT universities on textile innovations. “These are among the best [minds] in the world at surface chemistry,” says Butler. “You have to ride the wave and look at new technologies then apply them in an effifficient manner. We’re not a textile manufacturer – the banks won’t lend to textile companies – we’re a new-generation 3D composite materials company. All the old paradigms have to go.”