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G.Gurumurthy

COIMBATORE, April 22

THE Austrian cellulosic fibre giant, Lenzing Fibres, which is promoting its new generation viscose fibre brand `modal' in the Indian market, will not encourage export of this yarn from Indian mills.

"Our intention is not to encourage export of modal yarn out of India either to the EU or the Far-Eastern Markets because we do not want to disturb these yarn markets with newer imports from India," Mr Ernst Sandrieser, Lenzing Fibres' Sales and Marketing manager for Americas, India and Pakistan told Business Line.

Lenzing Fibres is building a consumer base in India for its modal fibre through select Indian textile manufacturers and its market tie-up with these Indian consumers is bound by this clause that discourages exports of modal yarn from Indian producers.

Unlike the US, where the spinning activity has almost been shifted out, the specialty yarn producers in Europe manufacture modal yarn.

Lenzing already has a long-term arrangement with these producers and hence it does not want these bases to be disturbed. Europe accounts for 45 per cent of Lenzing's modal fibre market and Asia constitutes the second biggest market for the Austrian company.

Lenzing is, however, looking at Indian textile exporters as promising consumers of its branded fibres and expects they will be using modal for high value garment manufacture.

Lenzing is targeting India, China and Korea as the new growth area for its branded `modal' fibre, which is billed to replace the polynosic fibre in these regions in the coming days.

With an apparel boom in India, fashion garments in which specialty yarns have been used is likely to have a considerable share of the market in the future.

Lenzing has chosen to work with two major spinning houses, one each in northern and southern India - Rajasthan Textile Mills of the Bhilwara group and Lakshmi Mills, Coimbatore.

While LMC will produce modal yarn of finer counts, the northern textile group will produce coarser count modal yarn.

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