Vefa Örme Kumaşçılık, Will Also Step in the Yarn Sector
Vefa Örme Kumaşçılık, which has a monthly fabric production capacity of 1500 tons, continues its activities as the logistics partner of the companies operating in the textile industry.
Founded as a family company in 2004, Vefa Örme Kumaşçılık functioned as contract manufacturer for many large companies with its 26 machines in its early years. Then the company started its knitted fabric sales adventure by making productions intended for a yarn company. Currently, the company, which works in two branches, interlock, and single jersey, is planned to step into the rib knitting area.
As Textile Technology Magazine, we interviewed with Hakan Demir, Vefa Örme Kumaşçılık, Member of the Executive Board, about the company’s production capacity, operations and problems of the knitting sector. Demir talked about the future projects of the company and informed us that Vefa Örme Kumaşçılık will relocate to a larger facility in Akçaburgaz/Hadımköy within this year. He also mentioned that they are onto a project to establish a spinning mill in the next five years.
What is the daily capacity of your facility? How does the procurement process of your productions progress?
Currently, 250 people are employed in our facility. We produce 50 tons per day and 1500 tons per month with the full capacity operations of 86 machines. After producing the raw fabric, we ship it to the dye houses. Later, the dye houses paint the fabrics and deliver them to our customers. Consequently, our customers carry on to sell those fabrics to the manufacturers. We are now the logistics partner of all the manufacturers in Zeytinburnu and several exporting customers.
What type of issues do you consider when making machinery investments?
In our facility, all of the machinery located are of Italian origin. Since we always desire to provide the same quality products to our customers, we take care that all of our machinery is uniform. If there is new technology available for our machines, we can consider investing in their upgrades. If we put the control and system in a wider range, our investments will continue.
How do you evaluate customer demands? Which countries do you export to most?
I can say that we are operating in full capacity right now and having a hard time to keep up with customer demands. Since the companies we work with are located domestically, we generally work in the domestic market. Thus, our products are exported indirectly. Many of them are Middle Eastern exports. We also aim to increase our exports to Poland and Russia.
Can you please tell us about your studies for R&D?
We work as summer-oriented and winter-oriented in our fabrics R&D. After studying on summer fabrics until July, we are working on winter fabrics until October. At the moment, we have received our summer fabric orders and we are moving ahead with a two and a half month of full occupancy. By varying yarn ratios in our R&D operations, we do different studies as well as work towards customer demands.
What are you doing as a company in terms of textile waste and recycling studies?
Since we are a service industry company, our waste amount is less. In addition, since the knitting industry is cleaner among the other textile industries, we are not likely to pollute the environment. Thanks to our recycling capabilities, we reuse flawed fabrics as yarn.
What problems are there in the knitting industry according to you?
Knitting is not an easy task when an organized system is not followed. Because each machine operates for a separate customer. This needs to be followed closely. The wrong fitting of a coil means the resulting product will be flawed for about 800 kilos.
When we consider in terms of production operations, we see that we have a long road to cover and in need of many more qualified personnel. Firstly, we must complete the development of human-based education. The staff who will work on the machinery in the textile industry needs to receive proper machine training. Knitting Industrialists Association (ÖRSAD) Chairman of the Board of Directors Fikri Kurt is doing very important studies for the education of the textile employees. We, as the ÖRSAD members, try to do our best in this regard. We, ourselves, provide machinery training to our co-workers in an applied and practical way. An uneducated, unskilled person will only harm his country. In the textile sector, we first need to install the system and upgrade the building on the base that we have built. We can’t unite in the sector and this constitutes one of our biggest problems. The firms being divided into separate branches creates competition among them while causes a loss of power in the sector. This situation inevitably brings the price policy forward.
What are your future projects as a company?
We are planning to establish a spinning mill in Çerkezköy in the next five years. Our yarn supply faces difficulties since our production volume is high and the yarn manufacturers cannot respond to our demands on time or do not want to be dependent. We have a target to establish a spinning mill on the grounds of preparing this groundwork.
Interview: Kübra KARACA
