The Gulf’s biggest textile mill is set to open its new dyeing and printing plant in Bahrain. Manama Textile Mills’ (MTM) new plant will produce home furnishing products including sheet sets, bed-in-a-bag, curtains, valances and kitchen and tableware.

The building is in its final phase of completion while most of the machines have landed and are under erection. The plant is expected to be in full production before the middle of this year.
This unique project is set up with an investment of $35 million and has a capacity of manufacturing 20,000 sheet sets every day.
“We have bought state-of-the-art European machines that would outclass all competition in terms of quality, volume and finish. The concept of the plant is to make medium- and high-end products that will land in major brand stores all over the US and Europe,” says corporate and marketing manager Adnan Bashir, who is also the project manager. It has a daily capacity of dyeing around 80,000 m and printing around 40,000 m of fabric.
 “Extensive automation in the plant has resulted in reducing reliance on manual labour to a huge extent. By merely automating the cut and sew fabrication operation, MTM has brought down its labour requirements by at least 1,400,” said Bashir.
“A similar facility of this size in South Asia is normally run by around 1,800 people, we will run it with 400 people.”
The plant will produce goods mainly using around 50 per cent of MTM’s existing greige fabric capacity and buying a part of its requirement of fabric from other countries.
According to details furnished by Bashir, the greige fabric will be passed through a desizing machine, supplied by Swiss firm Benninger, where the sizing material (PVA) will be recovered using the latest German-made PVA recovery system. This will result in around $3 million savings in sizing chemicals every year. The fabric will then be bleached in the pretreatment range before passing through a mercerizing range with Benninger machines, which will treat the fabric to ensure swelling of fibres so the dyes and chemicals can better penetrate into the fabric.
 The mercerizing machine consumes large quantities of caustic soda and in order to reduce the cost and ensure environmental performance, the company has installed a caustic recovery system, supplied by GTV of Germany, which will recover a large portion of the caustic soda online and make it fit for reuse. Next stage is a pass through a stenter frame range of Monforts of Germany before dyeing or printing.
A Monforts dry dyeing machine called Pad Thermosol is the most modern thermosoling machine in the market today. The next machine to be used is a Pad Steam Benninger dyeing and washing range. However, for lighter fabric shades, another stenter with a unique system called the Infra Therm Dye-Vac system will also be used.
The fabric after dyeing and washing passes through another Monforts finishing stenter frame range to fix the fabric, followed by a Brockner (Germany) sanforising range for controlling fabric shrinkage. For printed fabrics, the stented fabric will go into the rotary printing machine manufactured by Reggiani of Italy and which is capable of feeding a 15-colour design on the printed fabric. The printing machine is supported by a fully automatic Termoelettronica (Italy) colour kitchen, which is computer-controlled and ensures highly accurate colour definition and mixing. The next process involves fixing and curing of the prints by passing the fabric through an Arioli (Italy) steamer/curing machine. The plant also caters for various types of finishes for which a raising machine, supplied by Lafer of Italy, and a calendaring machine from Italy’s Ramisch Guarneri have been installed.
“Perhaps the biggest and the boldest step towards automation is the purchase of automatic fabrication plants from Texpa of Germany. These machines will reduce the number of people in the final step of production from 1,100 to 45, an unbelievable drawdown and cost saver,” said Bashir.
“These machines will take care of around 80 per cent of our production and only the special embellishment part of business will be done on the manual machine setup. Even that has to be done manually since automation has not gone to that extent, but whenever it happens, we will be the first in the queue.
“It is not only the cost effectiveness of the machines but also the fact that it produces far better quality in stitching than a manual setup can ever produce besides virtually eliminating human contact that can result in stains on the final product.”
MTM has allotted space for the second-phase expansion where another Pad Steam dyeing range, a rotary printing machine, a flat bed printing machine and a finishing Stenter will be added. This expansion will increase the dyeing capacity by 100 per cent and printing capacity by 150 per cent besides adding panel-printing capability.
The plant has a water treatment and recycling facility that will treat the wastewater and bring it down to agricultural grade. “Further it will nano and micro filter this water before passing it through a reverse osmosis system and sending it back to the process, hence reducing reliance on natural water by an amazing 75 per cent,” says Bashir.
“The Free Trade Agreement between the US and Bahrain will definitely give us an edge over a competition to a certain extent of business,” comments the official, referring to the cost differential from the duty free advantage. “However, we are not fully banking on the FTA. We have spent 10 years to build up an unstinting reputation with our buyers both in the US and EC and now is the perfect time to build on this relationship with a full product assortment where we can offer yarns, fabrics, garments and home furnishing products under one roof.”