MUMBAI, India — Beekalene Pvt. Ltd. has doubled capacity in the past two years, producing close to ten million meters of upholstery and drapery fabrics annually according to Karan Sehgal.

He runs the business with his father and his brother Kabir.

“Our expansion, which started last year, without the real estate would amount to about $5 million,” Karan said. “With real estate this would probably be $7.5 million.  We want our customers to know how serious we are and how eager we are to prove that we can deliver on time and deliver quality goods. We have the innovations, we have the aptitude, we have the client base but prior to this, we were lacking in this infrastructure which will be in place by Heimtex 2013. These infrastructure improvements have changed our underdog status.”   Karan Sehgal with fused fabric

Prices average between $5-$6 and a new domestic India line branded Aura Homes® expects to make its debut in 2013 with $4-$15 price points. This cut length program hopefully will roll out internationally in 2013 with 1,500 sku’s, Karan said.

The huge expansion, as much as 30 percent anticipated in the near future,  hinges on the successful completion of Beekalene’s first in house piece dye and yarn dyeing facility by yearend 2012 which requires the hiring of 60 additional employees on top of the 500 already working at Beekalene, he said. With dyeing now in house, delivery times will shrink from 8/10 weeks to six weeks, Karan expects.

With the dyeing capability come bleaching, calendaring and the production of shiny finishes and air finished chenille’s. “The Middle East has hung on to chenille’s more than anyone else,” he said. He said the finishing is still done on the outside however.

Beekalene is developing several product areas in its growth plan.

Digital printing is growing using an in house Mimaki machine as well as digitally printed plain and greatly expanded Tajima embroidered product in one piece minimums. Beekalene sells digital print patterns to up and coming jobbers like Maxwell Fabrics in North America and to a few wholesalers in the UK.

“We bother with digital printing because there is a huge potential market for it. Digital printing can be achieved in smaller runs as compared to screen prints with better color matching as well and digital is more dynamic then screen printing. We digitally print 16 million tones of colors,” Karan said. We own a mimaki. “Minimum orders are 100 meters per run spread across two sku’s,” Kabir chimes in. “Prices depend on the base composition. It varies from $9 to $15 USD per meter depending on the basecloth.  We do plain weaves with slubs, satins and use cottons, linens and rayon or viscose-linen blends. We can print on anything natural in content.” 

Beekalene also does embroidery before and after digital printing. “We don’t do screen, flat bed and rotary printing. We purchase designs from Italian studios and these can be very good sellers provided one buys the right design. We are thinking of adding more digital machines in the future as the demand is increasing.” 

In addition, Beekalene said it has a transfer-print machine and may add a digital transfer paper manufacturing machine as some markets consume mainly polyester based drapes as compared to naturals.

This mill also has a line of back coated fabrics fused to a poly/cotton face. “Fusion gives less expensive fabric their stability. For example, we can backcoat curtain weight goods and it then becomes suitable for heavier weight upholstery applications.” Beekalene has a corduroy fabric made this way inspired by its apparel division for $5 a meter in ten textures and 30 colorways. “This gives us extra mileage on our apparel fabrics,” Karan explained.

Pure linens are available—woven in India but the yarn comes from Belgium.

The digital prints, chenille’s, linens and fused fabrics will all be shown at Heimtextil 2013.

Beekalene is selling to the Middle East, Southeast Asia, US and Canada. The UK and Benelux is also “decent” businesswise for Beekalene, Karan said.