Sustainability – KG Fabriks (Nature’s Blue& Collaborations)
Managing a sustainable factory requires a lot of sacrifices. It is tough to maintain the same level of organisational efficiency in tandem with sustainability. KG Fabriks is the first Greenco Gold Certified Company in Textile Processing and Weaving sector, awarded by CII Green Business Centre. All of their manufactured products are certified by TUV Nord as Green Products.
What are KG Fabriks thoughtful philosophies related to sustainable workplaces?
KG Fabriks is called a green company for the following reasons:
- Energy Efficiency
- Water Conservation
- Renewable energy
- Green House Gas Reduction
- Waste Management
- Material Conservation, Recycling & Recyclables
- Green Supply Chain
- Product Stewardship and life cycle aspects
- Innovation for environment
- Green Infrastructure and Ecology
Our success is a result of consistent team effort and resolution to attain greater heights moving forward.
Features in Manufacturing Nature’s Blue:
Natural Plant based Indigo – Machine Dyed
Tripartite collaboration between Ministry of Textiles and South India Textile Research Association (SITRA)
Green Technology used
Green, Alkali used, replacing caustic
100% Green and Bio-Degradable Reducing agent used
Every dispatch will be SITRA certified products
One of our contacts in Tamil Nadu manufactured natural indigo for hair dyes. He had a dye uptake of 70% purity. Meanwhile, the Government of India funded us with 50% of the total project with SITRA. Using Glucose as a reducing agent and other materials, we produced natural indigo on the machine. There are various household methods for procuring natural indigo, but we were the first to do that on a machine. However, it is a continuous process, and we were ready to go for a total production of 50,000 meters on a large scale.
Being able to produce three different trademarked denim fabrics, GREEN DNM, PRODUCT ZERO and NATURE’S BLUE, we achieved massive success in this field whilst maintaining sustainability.
We are one of the signatories to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s “The Jeans Redesign” project, to produce Denim Fabric in line with the guidelines that set minimum requirements around garment durability, material health, water usage, recyclability, and traceability.
They put forward a list of requirements that were met accordingly:
| Jeans Redesign Requirements | KG Fabriks | |
| Waste Water (up to a max. of 25 litres/yard) | Zero wastewater fully compliant | |
| Hazardous chemicals (Should comply with ZDHC level 1 norms) | ZDHC level 1 compliant. 100% with ZLD and ZSD | |
| 30% Home laundry requirement | 94% of our styles meet these criteria | |
| 98% cellulosic denim fabric | 70% of our fabric conforms to this requirement | |
We are Zero Liquid Discharge and Zero Solid Discharge manufacturing facility.
We were also awarded the National Water Award 2018 and Excellent in Water Management 2019.
Sustainability – KG Fabriks (Green Dnm)
KG Fabriks is situated in Erode District, which is a part of South India, 60 kms away from the Coimbatore Airport. The percentage of built-up area is around 20%, ensuring that the remaining area is a green belt planted with trees.
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What are some of your thoughtful philosophies related to sustainable workplaces?
KG Fabriks distributes its manufacturing process in the following way: It has 3 Ring Spun yarn factories with 55000 spindles and 2 OE yarn factories with 7000 rotors, which combine up to 80 tons of yarn in a single day. Their Denim Fabric manufacturing facility has 72 looms to produce 20 million meters per annum. There is also a distinct Glove manufacturing unit which consists of 150 machines for 40000 pairs per day.
KG Fabriks markets Denim Fabric under three Registered Trademarks namely:
- True Sustainable Denim – Green Dnm
- Super Sustainable Denim – Product Zero
- Most Sustainable Denim – Nature’s Blue
Our Fabric Brands are based on GreenCo and Green Product platforms. Talking about Green Dnm, a registered trademark was provided to our sustainable denim for the following reasons:
There are various features in the manufacturing process that we follow. Even though we mention 15 litres of water, the entity manages to use only 6 litres of water to make a kilogram of denim. Generally, full utilization of cotton is not done by companies, but KG Fabriks has made it possible to have 100% use of cotton. It uses 94% of its cotton for the manufacturing procedure and the remaining 6% is sent for agricultural purposes. It also ensures 100% use of yarn by using the remnant yarns in glove manufacturing.
No chemical softening process is made in the finishing procedure,
KG Fabriks is the world’s only zero solid and zero liquid discharge plant.
100% of the packing material are reusable and 80% is biodegradable. We can say that packing material is used at least 10-15 times. Talking about recycled caustic, we have a recycling plant in-house. Hence we recycle the used caustic by ourselves, allowing us to buy only 20% fresh plastic. The average indigo dye uptake in today’s denim fabric is around 60%. But KG Fabriks has taken the dye uptake to an estimate of 90%, even though the diagram says 80%. This allows us to use only 3.5% indigo to give deep shades instead of a full 6% indigo. We are the only entity in the world that does not send its indigo to Effluent Treatment Plant. In these ways, KG Fabriks maintains wholesome sustainability.
Editor – in – Chief
Arun Karunakaran
