Home > Men Clothing > Kingdom Holding interacts with customers in India at Kingdom Linen Mumbai Day’

In a first of its kind effort, Kingdom Holding and its Indian Partner Sundarams Texventures LLP invited its Indian customers to share not only the success story of the company, but also the strategy going forward. More than 30 companies participated at the “Kingdom Linen Mumbai Day” recently and were enthralled to be updated on new developments, while using the platform to network with like-minded companies. The team from Kingdom was led by Ren Weiming, Chairman of the Board of Kingdom Holdings Limited. Manish Mehta of Sundarams Texventures and his team were the perfect hosts of the evening which started with presentations and ended with a networking dinner.

Welcoming the guest at the exclusive event, Ren Weiming reiterated the dedication of Kingdom Holding to the linen business with enduring passion for pure linen. “We are committed to upscale efforts to ensure the most advanced linen spinning technology ahead of the linen industry, aiming at the best quality of linen yarn in the world. Kingdom now is running three linen spinning mills, located in the two most developed textile centres in China – Zhejiang and Jiangsu Provinces, and now we are building a fourth spinning mill in Ethiopia,” said Mr. Ren. Kingdom, who currently has total installed spindles of over 1,00,000, with an annual capacity of more than 18,000 tonnes of wet spun linen yarn, making them one of the largest linen yarn spinners in the world with 35 per cent share of the export of linen yarn from China to the high-end markets including Italy, Japan, Korea and other countries in EU.

Mr. Ren also stressed upon the fact that India was an important and growing market for Kingdom. “India has become one of the fastest growing markets on linen consumption in the world. Kingdom, as an active linen yarn supplier in India, takes it as our responsibility to provide better quality linen yarn, to meet the continuous upgrading demand in the market. With our third spinning mill, we will have sufficient capacity to meet the quantitative demand in India and I firmly believe India will be one of Kingdom’s major markets in the future,” he said. Many of the guests sitting in the room were in agreement to the statement. “We make 100% home fashion products, including double width bedspreads using linen for the international market, and the demand is increasing consistently,” said Ramasamy Arasu of Master Linen, Karur . The SA-8000 & ISO-9002 company exports to the US, Norway, Sweden, Denmark among other countries and has a turnover of around Rs. 100 crore (US $ 15 million).

Even representatives of textile giants that work with numerous other fibres like Arvind, Mafatlal, Vardhman, Raymond and Donear were very positive of growth in the linen segment. “Using linen in our collection of offerings, not only attracts high-end buyers but also gives value to the supply chain,” reasoned Vijay Puniyani of Vardhman. Linco Textiles, Erode is making 100 per cent linen fabric from Kingdom yarn to supply exclusively to Grace Lanka Apparels, which produces 80,000 linen pieces per month for the international market. “This exclusive tie-up has given edge and growth to both companies,” shared Ullas D Nair of Linco Textiles. Mohamad Azam Habib, MD of Grace Lanka Apparels had flown down especially for the event to share his enthusiasm and positivity of the potential in linen.

A presentation given on Quality, Innovation and Development, by Wang Jian, Sales Manager of Kingdom Holdings Limited was well received, while the presentation on the flax industry in Europe by Jean Claude Lambert from Teillage De Lin Du Vert Galant , one of the best flax scutching enterprises in France and Marc Devoldere from Devoldere – traders in flax, updated the guest on the current developments in Europe. But what really attracted the attention was Manish’s address which gave the direction for India business. Associated with Kingdom since 2009 and a motivating force in bringing the company to India, Manish candidly said, “At that time the consumption of linen yarn in India was at a very nascent stage but I had a definite idea that it was going to grow very fast. I explained the future potential of linen yarn in Indian market and Kingdom believed me that was how this business association started.” Kingdom appointed Texventures as their exclusive agents in the year 2009 for promotion and sales of their wet spun linen yarn in Indian market, later neighbouring countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka were added to this exclusive arrangement.

“We started with a mere 300 MT sales in the year 2009-2010, and in last calendar year (2015) we achieved sales of 2,400 MT of Kingdom’s linen yarn in India, which alone accounts for around 20 per cent of the total 12,000 MT yarn shipped from China to India during this period,” said Manish proudly. Today, India is consuming around 15 per cent of total linen yarn produced in the world and that too prominently for its domestic market. Kingdom realized the potential of Indian market very early and took an initiative to come closer to customers by starting the warehousing of linen yarn at Arshiya Free Trade Warehousing Zone, Nhava Sheva in the year 2012. Manish shared that customers in India have the choice to make the payment by LC or TT to Kingdom in USD and clear the goods in India from FTWZ out of ready stock by paying the duty at FTWZ. And the customers who are exporting the fabrics, garments or home textiles etc. can clear the linen yarn from FTWZ against their duty-free advance licences as well. Customers can book their monthly or quarterly requirements of linen yarn and can clear the goods from Arshiya in small lots of even 12 MTs as per their consumption. “This way there is no need to keep the stock at your factory after importing in container loads on CIF basis. You may kindly tell us your requirements over a period, we make the contracts and then keep the goods ready to deliver to you as per the consumption at your factories,” averred Manish to the delight of the guests.

The product range on offer from Kingdom includes 100 per cent wet spun linen yarn from counts 10 Lea to 44 Lea in Short Fibre and Long Fibre, and from 50 Lea to 140 Lea only in Long Fibre. Except for very fine counts like 80 Lea to 140 Lea, all the yarns are available in natural and semi-bleached options. Apart from regular yarns, the company is also offering full bleached yarns, circular and flat knitting yarns, 2-ply yarns, high twist crêpe yarns, organic yarns with GOTS certification. In addition to semi-bleached, full bleached and natural options, Kingdom is also producing 100 per cent linen top dyed mélange yarns for weaving and knitting in the counts mainly 44 Lea to 66 Lea. The minimum order quantity per colour for mélange yarns is as low as 300 kgs per colour. Further development of wet spun linen blends with silk, wool, Tencel, etc. is underway to be launched shortly.

Kingdom has another facility Kinglino Flax Fiber Company which is refining the flax fibre for cotton, wool and silk spinning systems. The refined flax fibre when bended with other co-fibres during spinning and converted into fabric come very close to looking and feeling like 100 per cent linen fabrics. “We are offering this fibre for cotton spinning systems in India and also promoting and marketing a blend of our linen fibre blended with Lyocell fibre and marketing it as Lincell Yarn. Lambodhrara Textiles, Palani is manufacturing lincell yarns from 9s to 46s counts and the same is being marketed in India and overseas by us,” shared  Manish.

Among the guest, many agreed that the sustainable edge of linen is a major attraction today. “Not only in the company making sustainable products, but it is also manufacturing under ethical and sustainable processes. This combination of sustainability with updated technology and manufacturing capabilities makes Kingdom the market leader in Linen and a preferred source for companies like us,” concluded Raja Palanisamy of KKP Spinning Mill, echoing the sentiments of other Kingdom customers.

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