Bharat Apparel - Apparel Portal

SRI LANKA: MAS Fabric Park begins operations

COLOMBO: The world’s first eco friendly fabric and apparel manufacturing zone opened on Friday. The MAS Fabric Park went public as the world’s first non polluting fabric and apparel manufacturing zone based on an eco-friendly blueprint.

The MAS Fabric Park was previously the Kabool Lanka textile manufacturing zone that was out of operation for a number of years and last year the government handed over management of the facility to MAS Holdings. MAS is now completely overhauled and modernized the zone on an environmentally friendly framework.

The eco-friendly manufacturing zone has cost the company US$ 25 million to create. It has invested heavily in water and affluent treatment and other environmentally friendly design aspects.

In keeping with its environmentally friendly theme, much of the output of the park will be recycled and reused. The company has agreed to share its treated water with farmers in the neighborhood to be used in farming activity. The park will also generate bio-gas that will be used for cooking and other waste matter will be converted into compost and used as fertilizer.

The company is in the process of getting international certifications to back up its claim of being an environmentally friendly fabric and apparel manufacturing facility.

The fabric park is expected to bring in US$ 100 million worth of investments over the next 5 years. The park already has a warp-knit manufacturing facility by Dogi-EFA and a fabric printing unit by Text Print along with a local investor Bam Knitting and an eco-manufacturing factory by MAS Holdings to produce clothing for UK retailer Marks & Spencer.

The park will also fill backward integration gaps in the local garment sector. The Dogi –EFA factory for instance, is expected to meet total domestic demand for warp knitted fabric. This is expected to save the country about US$ 100 million in foreign exchange per year that is otherwise spent on importing the fabric.

Warp knit fabric for instance, is used for specialised items like lingerie and swimwear that are high priced, niche exports. The Dogi EFA unit in the MAS Fabric Park is currently the first export scale warp knit fabric manufacturing unit in whole of South Asia. So this is expected to act as a magnet to more business.

The park is on the look out for potential investors. It is expected to generate thousands of new jobs and provide training and education facilities.

Source: Agencies • News Courtesy: BharatTextile.com