I am
currently in Sri Lanka on part of a Sustainable Manufacturing and Cultural tour
with some of the students I teach on the Fashion Buying and Brand Management BA
Hons course at Ravensbourne. I decided
to share my experience here on my blog daily to record the visit as a reference
for the students as well as for my own readers who will also hopefully find it
of interest.
We are here
visiting factories and learning about producing fashion from the very first
stage of picking the cotton bud through to printing and production. We are based at MAS Fabric part situated
about an hour and a half north west of Colombo in an area called Thulhiriya. Sustainability is one of the key ethics on
the agenda at MAS and they have created the worlds first purpose-built green
manufacturing plant within the apparel industry which we were taken to today.
This trip crucial
experience for the students who otherwise usually wouldn’t get the chance to
see and experience how clothing is produced until much further into their
careers. In fact, through my own career,
I have seen friends and colleagues wait years to get the opportunity to visit
factories. Without this experience,
their career can often be forfeited on progressing to the next level as most
recruiters and employers require their employees to have experienced and more importantly
understand this process before they can get promoted within their positions. Gaining this experience at this stage, as students,
will be key in these student’s journeys to becoming professionals within the
fashion industry post graduation (and something I wish I had had the
opportunity to experience for myself as a student).
We started
our day with an introduction to MAS holdings and how and why it was established. We were briefed on the company which went
into detail about their sustainability program including how they transform the
sludge produced from excess waste that they have transformed into a brick to be
used in building works which is twenty percent stronger than your usual
brick! They also went into their work
ethics for their employees including making sure all employees are transported
to work and get off site on busses provided with in six minutes of finishing their
shifts. We were then shown a couple of
videos of knit production and introduced to the two different types of knit:
Welt knit (horizontal) and Warp Knitting (vertical)
After the introduction
we were taken to one of the fabric mills within the grounds and introduced to the
fabric manufacturing process from fibre to fabric showing the different
techniques used to create fabrics such as Spandex and Nylon. These fabrics were being used to create swim
and active wear for brands such as Nike and Speedo. This particular mill is at the forefront of
fabric technology and innovation creating unique elements such as soft seal, 3D
bra wires and flocked silicone.
We then went
into a factory called Trishel and were introduced to more fabric manufacturing
processes. We were shown knit machinery demonstrating
the two methods of knit we were introduced to earlier. These huge machines were connected up to
hundreds of threads to create these fabrics and take a day to be manually
threaded up! One roll of Nylon and
Spandex was being spun from 1700 separate threads! We were then take through the dying process for
these fabrics of which there are two methods; Beam dying and Jet Dying.
Just before
lunch we went to a factory called Thurulie who are the worlds first purpose
built green manufacturing plant in the apparel industry. Everything is sustainable down to the bricks
that are used to build the building being created from waste sludge from
production down to using renewable energy and having a green roof which we all
got to go up to and see! It was really
inspiring to see and will hopefully be the future for fashion production.
In the
afternoon we were taken to another factory called Textprint specialising in
printing fabrics. We were shown
demonstrations of the four separate print processes; foil, flatbed, rotary and
digital.
Unfortunately,
we were unable to take pictures from within the factories or share all the
details but this gives a good overview of the kind of things we all experienced
and learned today.
