Square Group ventures into denim business

The increased demand for high-end denim fabric in the global market has prompted Square Group to venture into the denim business.
The Square Denim Ltd has already set up a Tk 400 crore denim fabric producing mill at Habiganj.
The Square Denim began production in July last year. Construction of the unit started in 2013 on 294 bighas of land at Shaistaganj in Habiganj.
The company has targeted to produce 3.5 million yards of denim fabric a month from the units and now the production is 1.2 million yards a month.
Factory authorities said that the production of fabric would be 2.5 million yards a month by the end of this year.
‘We have set up a denim factory considering the fast growing denim fashion market in the world and we chose Habiganj to meet the required pressure of gas and availability of land,’ Tapan Chowdhury, managing director of the Square Group, told New Age.
He said that Square set up the denim factory targeting to cater the market of value added products, volume-based business was not the target of the company.
Tapan said that there were huge potential of denim fabric and products in
the global market due to the changing fashion trend. At the same time, Bangladesh can take extra advantage on denim as the country has a strong readymade garment segment.
He said that the group invested Tk 400 crore for the project and they have a plan to set up a spinning mills beside the denim factory.
A total of 950 people work in the denim factory there and 70 per cent of them have accommodation facilities.
To meet the international guideline for environment, the factory established an effluent treatment plant with a capacity to treat 70,000 litres of water an hour.
To reduce the dependence on ground water the company established a plant to harvest rain water with a reservoir capacity of 162,000 litres.
The entire unit is equipped under busbar trunking system for lighting and power distribution to ensure electrical safety and it also introduced lightning arrester to protect the insulation and conductors of the system from the damaging effects of lightning.
During a recent visit to the factory at Habiganj, Syeed Ahmed Chowdhury, general manager of Square Denim Limited, said that the aim of the factory was quite different from the other traditional denim fabric manufacturers in the country as the company designed its production facilities targeting the high value-added fashion market in the globe.
He said that already they have been producing fabric for the world’s biggest buyers and the export orders are increasing due to quality fabric.
Bangladesh has an opportunity to gain wider market share in denim as China shifted their production to the Hi-Tech industry from the basic products, Syeed said.
According to the industry insiders, there are 30 denim fabric mills in the country with the production capacity of more than 40 million yards a month against demand for nearly 70 million yards.
Currently, Bangladesh’s export earnings from denim was more than US$ 2 billion.