Garware
Factory focus
WAI, a rural town with a population of some 50,000, is about 230km from Mumbai and sits at an altitude of 2,300 feet. Garware built its second plant here in 1995 to expand the labour intensive business in an area where workers were more plentiful than in the city of Pune.
As Pravin Gogia, senior vice president (International Business), explained, the population of Pune has swelled to seven million and the town has grown too big, encircling the industrial estate where the first factory was built in 1976.
Competition for labour there has increased as other sectors- call centres, software units, banks, and the auto industry- ‘hoover’ up people.
It was an astute decision to open up a new location and the Wai operation, set on 70 acres of land, has seen 25 years of growth, making a considerable impact on the local economy.
Garware, the biggest company in the town, provides much needed full-time jobs for the local populace, including many of the women from the villages around Wai.
The company lays emphasis on skill development, and all employees receive training in the required technical skills, said Vivek Deshpande, general manager (Production), as he leads a tour of the factory.
Deshpande, a chemical engineer who has worked for Garware for 20 years, is an expert in extrusion, the start of the production process. The customer requirement goes to the net assembly department and they work back to extrusion, he said.
This is where the maximum cost of a net is involved and where most of the quality happens, so it is a critical part of production. There are a large variety of extrusion machines and the process uses a major part of the entire plant’s electricity.
It all begins as plastic granules and added in are the colour granules and various additives, with a large range of options. The raw materials are bought from reputed chemical manufacturers across the globe and are made especially for Garware, pioneers in HDPE monofilament.
Then they mix them and the first stage of the process melts the plastic at around 200 deg C, producing monofilament from the plastic.
The monofilament is then boiled again to make it soft before it is stretched to give it strength. This is then wound round aluminium pipes (cops) to be made into twine.
There are two types of twine for nets – braided and twisted – and Garware also makes one with stainless steel and HDPE for electric fencing. The company, said Deshpande, is the largest supplier in the world of electric fence wire.
Netting section
The netting sheds house hundreds of machines, including knotless machines to make STAR netting and knot machines to make Sapphire netting (such as Sealpro).
The latter machine knots the twine and then hammers the knot to tighten it. The machine can be set to single (as used in Sealpro) or double sided knots.
Once the netting is made, it is stretched after heating with hot steam on a length stretching machine, and then it is bundled.
Sapphire once stretched has no slippage in the
diamonds, said Deshpande. Women manually check the quality of the Sapphire Sealpro, which can be made from a twine size of 1.5mm diameter up to 7mm.
We are then driven to the net loft, a large site with a plot for expansion, and greeted by A.S Joshi, associate vice president (Operations).
Here, there is minimum machine use and many people, mostly women, work manually to fulfil custom made orders.
The biggest net they have made is a 64-tonne purse seine net and much of the company’s business is for the fishing, as well as the aquaculture, industry. But there is a growing market for sports nets, too, and they also manufacture safety nets for construction sites; rock fall protection netting; reservoir lining and much more.
Aquaculture nets are generally between one and eight tonnes but Joshi points out the 11-tonne net being prepared for Nordlaks’ gigantic Havfarm project.
This entails intensive work involving many skilled people, he said, and videos of the net taking shape are sent to the Norwegian designer, who was about to visit in person to check on progress.
Once approved, the net will become the template for the other nets in the Havfarm structure.
‘Aquaculture keeps changing so we have to continually associate with the customer,’ said Joshi.
Garware has made aquaculture nets up to 200m circumference and 56m deep and has the capability to make much larger and deeper nets.
In the net loft, the netting is cut into the required shape and panels are joined and ropes attached.
Any accessories (rings and so on) that have been specified are added here too.
There is a ‘needle’ (shuttle) machine that Joshi and his team developed to wind the twine; it used to take 100 people to make 25,000 of these per day, now just two men operate the machine. Another in-house invention cuts and measures rope.
Along in the Coated Fabric shed, tarpaulins for bath treatments and lice skirts are manufactured, the latter made abrasion resistant with different stages of coating.
Wrasse hides are also made here, in four grade PVC that lasts for more than three years, and sold in Scotland and Norway.
“
Aquaculture keeps changing so we have to customer” continually associate with the
Pune
The Wai factory operates around the clock, seven days a week, as does the rope factory at Pune, about two hours’ drive back towards Mumbai, and sited beside Garware’ s head offices.
Here, Sandip Gupte is the expert guide, both to the manufacturing procedures and the company’s best practices.
There is bonding among employees with the Garware family, and the core values of the company ‘are in our DNA’, he said.
Motivational signs above the factory entrances – ‘You only lose when you stop trying’ and ‘Run the machine during lunchtime because lunch is for man not machine’ – prove his point.
Many staff, he said, have worked there for 20 to 30 years and there has not been a single day of labour unrest in 43 years.
Are there any flipsides to this exemplary discipline?
Management tries to understand if things aren’t working, he said, and people may need coaching for instance. But it is very rare for someone to be ill disciplined.
He has worked for Garware for 33 years and is clearly a ropes man, devoted to his department. He begins in the Pre-twisting section – complete with its SQDC boards, with their daily records of problems (not reaching a target, for instance) and solutions (usually involving training the operator). Smiley faces denote success.
In the extrusion section, much like in Wai, plastic granules are melted (at 270-280 deg C). This polypropylene becomes yarn in the heating process and is then stretched to make it 13 times stronger. It is then wound on to bobbins, and can be twisted or not.
Each separate department has its own quality control laboratory where each batch is tested against specifications – breaking strength tests and so on.
Gupte points to the Plateena rope, seven times lighter than steel but just as strong. It looks and feels like thickly plaited hair. And it is coated to reduce abrasion (before it is plaited).
This is mostly used for mooring systems for aquaculture, but has other applications, including mooring aircraft carriers for the Indian navy.
In another shed, yarn is made into rope on an old fashioned looking loom. Guotepresents a perfect specimen of finished rope with a satisfied smile.
A huge braiding machine can make rope of vari0us diameters and he shows coils of the easy to handle X2, the same strength but with less diameter than standard rope and perfect for mooring in aquaculture.
There are recoiling areas and packing stations and another sign above the entrance reads ‘Cleaning with meaning every day’.
Apart from aquaculture, there is a whole operation making ropes for sports and a smaller one making fine hair for dolls, proof again of the versatility and flexibility on display throughout Garware.