Lahore - Combined Fabrics Ltd., the largest supplier of knit garments to apparel brand Levi’s, is expanding its capacity with the addition of a new fabric cutting line.
The TUKAcut 9.0 high ply fabric cutter from Tukatech is designed to meet requirements of apparel, PPE and uniform manufacturers in the Industry 4.0 era. The latest, high productivity model can be used for cutting up to 9cm high compressed fabrics and is renowned for its reduction in energy consumption (k/w/hour used) compared to previous models.
This is key consideration for many circular knitters, especially in countries such as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and even parts of the United States where electricity costs of factories can be extremely high when running multiple shifts and demand for faster production is required.
“We saw how TUKA cutting room solutions reduced 80 per cent of our staff in cutting room, improved our quality and eliminated useless steps," explained Sheikh Tariq Mehmood, director of Combined Fabrics. "We really are a very happy users of TUKAcad, TUKA3D, CutPlanning, SMARTmark, automatic high ply fabric cutter and spreader, and unit production systems. We have almost everything TUKA offers and we are adding more systems only because we have seen the results."
“When (the company) came to us and saw what we were doing, and how we were doing it, it opened our eyes to what we were doing wrong,” added Atif Shaik, Director, Combined Fabrics. Without implementing any systems at first and with guidance from Tukatech, Combined Fabrics saw a 7 per cent fabric saving, immediate improvements, and cost savings. With TUKA systems, Combined Fabrics saw their consumption reduce from 12-14 per cent per garment.
Founded in 1990, Combined Fabrics Limited is a WRAP Certified, vertically integrated knit apparel manufacturing facility with operations ranging from thread and yarn manufacturing, to fabric, garment and dyeing & finishing facilities.
The company mainly operates Orizio machines offering pique, jersey, fleece, french terry and herringbone fabrics. It also produces interlock (interlock waffle, mini waffle, thermal, mini thermal), rib with & without lycra (ranging from 1 x 1 rib up to 12 x 1 rib), and auto and engineered stripes (in a wide range of jersey & pique fabrics).
Combined also operates a bank of 21 flat knitting machines, including Stoll technology, to produce trims including solid, tipped and jacquard trims.
