On the 21st and 22nd I went on location to a few factories to see how the grey cloth (untreated material) is dyed and printed. It was a long drive out as the region is on the outskirts of Surat in a place called the Palsana District, the roads were thick with trucks transporting cloth into and out of the area. The government allocates certain places to different industries so this particular area housed around 300 different factories all dying and/or printing cotton, polyester and nylon fabrics.
Other processes included treatments using solvents to make fabrics take on properties the customer requires, including; treating cotton through a roller machine to give one side of it a shiny appearance, putting polyester through a heat treatment and chemical process to give it a springy and soft feel like cotton or lambs wool and giving it fire retardant and resistant properties. The dying processes are done under intense heat (130 degrees Celsius) and very high pressure (120-130 psi), then rinsed and dried under a higher temperature (300 degrees Celsius) achieving an even colour distribution and making the fabric permanently colour fast.
The sheer scale of the operations was unexpected, the factory that I was able to take photos at ran 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with each laborer working an 8 hour shift for around Rs200 per day (approx. £2.50). The atmosphere was steaming hot, noisy, busy and claustrophobic. That said it was very well organised and had a fully-equipped medical area and clean cafeteria serving fresh homemade food to its 2000 employees. The company was called Durga Processors PVT. Ltd. if any one is interested in looking it up.
Each day they outputted 100,000 metres of fabric, of which approximately 80% would be finished, cut, folded, packaged and sent out to the customer, the fabric lengths are sewn together to achieve an endless run of material for each of the machines.
In order to achieve this workload there was around 4 boiler rooms, producing electricity and steam. These were housed in big hangars and used 800,000 litres per day, and half a forest to fuel them.
On the second day I was taken locally to a smaller district of around 70 factories, where the same processes were going on. The conditions were hotter and more claustrophobic and dirtier, although when taken to the offices I was impressed with the design areas and technology they had.
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