Tell us about Archroma’s innovation and sustainable approach.
All our initiatives are basically driven for sustainability in textiles. We have the widest portfolio that one single company can offer. The name Archroma formed with the acquisition of many globally renowned textile brands and companies. Many European and US brands use Archroma color standards as inspiration for the fashion. So in Archroma innovation stays very much from the designer level. We sell the color standards in the name of Archroma color atlas. And then it comes to our Textile industry where we have producers of natural fibers like cotton or cellulose fibers, discourse and cell synthetic fibers like polyester, polyamide acrylic, or animal fibers like wool. So we as a company provide all the color solutions for all these kinds of textile fibers. On one side we produce color, on the other side we deliver safety with processed chemicals and auxiliary. We deliver comfort with our finishing chemicals. The famous names like fix-up rate regimes the famous brands like dry marine reactive ties, foreign dispersed ties or halogerine binders print to fix pigments. These are the brands that have been delivering the joy of application or performance of the fabric for years. All this comes from Archroma.
These are the product lines that come from the very pretreatment phase and you have also products for finishing?
Yes!! Until finishing we have a complete range of products,
Even we have products for synthetic fiber manufacturing, we call it spinning of fiber. We have a salon range of products that we use for synthetic fiber manufacturers.
Tell us about your latest innovations or what you have in your pipelines to come.
We have a target to sell 50% of innovative sustainable products in a yearly turnover. Over the last four years, we’ve been offering quite a number of innovation systems for our industry that were targeted to save water, energy, and the human resources. The buying houses, factories, buyers all are run under heavy competitiveness with each other. We also need to be competitive. So, innovation is must here. We have Dive for the dark shades where you reduce your water consumption by more than 30% production time more than 25%. It comes from our deep dive system for cotton we have a dark breed system for the blocks and extreme dark sheets because these are the dark sheets are most cost-intensive. More chemical-intensive and more process time intensive we produce a deep dive system for that we have Danube industry in Bangladesh they use more than eight or nine chambers to produce the wash down effect. For the fashion industry archroma offered advanced denim. We also have collaborated with many companies for this advanced denim where we reduce the water consumption by 90% so these are some of the many innovation stories. Very recently we have partnered with Clean Core, you know denim industry is a pioneering industry in our country there you require a lot of water to bring the wash down look but with Clean Core. You don’t require water to bring that down look and still enjoy that town fashion, so this is one of the recent innovation.
Due to Ukraine- Russia war the global recession is very high now. How this effect your business?
People are now spending more of their money on food and they don’t afford to spend on textiles or clothing so this has significantly impacted the export business because Europe the sources primarily from we are the second biggest supplier in the international export trade of textile and apprentice. So we see the impact very sharp and when we see means, Bangladeshis filling the bench of it because we experienced a kind of revenge purchase because even after of Covid-19 consumers still not back on the normal purchasing mood. Meanwhile war put us into the energy crisis and inflation. All business are going through a bad time now. Fashion industry is not a different, has to experience it. And we are at the back end of the supply chain. We have the same impact on our business.
But even in the Covid-19 era, Bangladesh apparel business did well compare to many other manufacturing countries !
Yes, thanks to our business leaders in BGMEA, BTMA and thanks to the government, who understood the overall business environment and who managed these covid-19 situations in Bangladesh most intelligently and smartly. Sure.
Does Archroma have any plans to have a plant in Bangladesh? So far, I know that they have 24 plants all around the world.
We have 26 plants all over the world. I can’t exactly commit the time but it will come.
Archroma has taken a part on United Nations Sustainability Goals…
Yes, we are committed to United Nations Sustainability Development Goals and one of the most important aspect in SDG is reducing carbon dioxide emission, greenhouse gas. We measured carbon dioxide emissions. We have a lot of commitments around SDG. And out of this commitment, very recently, we joined this usage.
Do you think sustainability is measures correctly by the all business stakeholders?
We all talk about sustainability. Sometimes sustainability has become a buzzword. But I can assure you that in Archroma, we really practice it. If you cannot measure something, you cannot improve. In Archroma, we claim the things that we can measure. We have well known one-way tool. It’s an online tool. Many of our partner’s customers, are also using it in one way. We calculate what your dimension is, and what is your time and energy resource, you applied while you produce fabric. So in Archroma, we call it Archroma with safe, efficient, enhanced. Safe means when you use it, when you wire or when you throw it away, it’s still safe for the environment. When you wear it, it is safe. When you use or you produce it, the chemicals that you handle are safe to use. The fabric you produce is safe to wear.
Does that mean no harmful things around here??
This is our one of the sustainability expectations. When we say efficient, we work with our means for efficiency because it’s all about again, connecting with planet profit. So when we work with our industry, we work for this efficiency. Efficiency means our customers can produce better impactful, a cost-effective product to offer their customers. So a product that gives enhanced quality, some buyers ask for fastness, some buyers ask for long-lasting color. So we supply those in an efficient manner. And when we say enhanced, that means it can last longer. One garment, shirt, takes 2700 liters of water in its life cycle. Out of this, 40% is during cotton production, so raised 60% is during the manufacture of the fabric. But if you apply something with enhanced effect that your garments don’t need to wash that keep it clean it for long time. We have effects so you don’t need to wash it every day. So it means you reduce impact of water a lot. So this is about enhanced effect in our fabric. And if a company deliver this value, This will help the industry to upgrade.
Do you have any message about your cost-effective solution for those who use this, those who consume in the textile industry of here in Bangladesh?
When you consider chemicals from a chemical company, we have three components. One is basic chemical which is salt, soda, acid, and parasite, this kind of chemical is auxiliary chemical that helps your processing to have level dying or with dying with good faster and other is die. And number four component is value edition chemical for comfort and care. So for Bangladesh, we are still known as supplier of basic. So comfort and care kind of advanced level chemicals in Bangladesh is relatively low. So when we say the basic level of chemicals, the dying oxiliates and rice there we supply solutions that can help you right first time. And we say dying on time and and right fast time. So some dying if we say on time are extended to 12 hours. Imagine a machine has an hour head burden. In Bangladesh this is a very important because every day the cost of manpower, the cost of electricity is on the rise. So we work with our partners in one side how we get our recipe directly involved with cost of the products and the other side educating our partners how they can save doing it right on time, If we are not competitive, we cannot be partnered to our clients.
Where do you want to see yourself in Bangladesh by the year of 2030?
A clear vision to serve the industry sustainably. And we have our company, with this target in mind, has taken over many important, well known brands of the industry. As we mentioned, we have taken Bass, which is a name for printing. We have taken Mdomin, which is a name for polystradise. Our Dry, Madison were the brands, well-known brands for cotton. Our epitome kinds of surface chemicals are well-known brands in the industry for finishing and coating. So when we have all these products in one customer, in one supply point, in Archroma, our customers really enjoy shopping with us and with this convenience and with the commitment that we have for the industry, we want to be clearly leading a market share, major market share of this, of course, by 2023.
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