Alok Industries’ customers include Walmart, Macy’s.
WASHINGTON, DC: In what may seem as an incredible and incongruous decision to many, an Indian textile manufacturer is planning to open its first textile mill in the United States forsaking its home country because of lower energy costs.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Mumbai-based Alok Industries, which counts among its customers Walmart and Macy’s for home textiles like sheets and towels, has been forced to take the decision to save on energy costs, according to a company executive. Unlike India, where the cost of electricity is zooming and is also erratic in its service, US of late has been having a boom with reduced costs and an abundance of shale gas production.
Alok will finalize a deal to revive a closed mill in the Southeast U.S. this year, said Arun Agarwaal, chief executive of Alok International Inc., a U.S. unit of Alok Industries, in an interview to the Journal.
The mill, which would spin U.S.-grown cotton into yarn or thread, would be a major shift in the textile industry. For years the U.S. has shipped its cotton to mills overseas for processing, and then imported the finished products. Agarwaal said Alok’s mill would spin the U.S. cotton and export the yarn to weaving and sewing factories in Latin America, according to the Journal.
He said Alok chose the U.S. for its access to cotton. The U.S. is the world’s third-largest cotton producer, behind China and India. More important, he said, energy costs in the U.S. are almost a fourth of what they are in India, Mr. Agarwaal said.
Alok is working with a major U.S. retailer to open the mill, Agarwaal said, but he declined to say which company.
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