Welspun Flooring, a part of line pipes and home textiles major Welspun group, is planning to invest ₹ 200 crore to enhance its production capacity. The company, which had forayed into the flooring segment a couple of years back with an investment of ₹ 1,150 crore at a plant in Hyderabad, is also witnessing good traction of its products in the international market, partly driven by anti-China sentiment in the global supply chain.
Commenting on the development, Mukesh Savlani, CEO, Welspun Flooring said, “Incremental investments are happening. We are expanding on the hard flooring side. Those are happening between now and June next year. We are currently at 3 million square metre capacity on the hard flooring. We will be ramping up this capacity to 12 million square metres. The approximate investment for the capex will be about ₹ 200 crore.”
Welspun Flooring had entered the market with stone polymer composite luxury performance tiles, carpet tiles, wall to wall carpets and artificial grass.
On the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Savlani said, “When we were just about to take off, Covid hit us but that is behind us now. For sure, things are looking bright at both international and the Indian side.”
He further elaborated that international exports volumes are multiplying month-on-month basis now, mainly driven by markets like the US, Europe and the Middle East which largely remained open even when India was under lockdown. “We do feel all the supply chains in the world are following a strategy of ‘China plus one’. This will be visible in flooring also.”
Savlani, however, opined that the anti-China sentiment aside, India has to make sense as far as competitiveness is concerned. “We were able to address competitiveness through our manufacturing facility in India and while anti-China did give us a start, we have to continue on our merits and ensure we get this sustained momentum going forward,” he added.
“We should be looking at around ₹ 250 crore by end of the year. This will be 2.5 times of last year. Next financial year we are looking at over ₹ 500-600 crore,” said Savlani about the revenue expectation, further adding that currently, the company’s international revenues are higher than domestic but in three to four years it will be 50-50.
“Welspun Flooring is planning to ramp up its distribution network by adding 500 more retail points to take it to about 1,000 retail points by the end of next year,” added Savlani.