Sri Lanka’s largest weft knit fabric manufacturer opens

Textured Jersey Lanka, a collaboration between Pacific Textiles Hong Kong and Brandix Lanka and the country’s largest weft knit fabric manufacturer, housing one of the world’s most modern dye houses, opened this week just outside Colombo.

Ceremonially inaugurated by the US Ambassador Robert O Blake Jnr, Textured Jersey Lanka which has always been considered the Rolls Royce in Sri Lanka’s fabric industry employs a highly literate skilled team of over 1,200 within its 18 acre green field site at the Seethawaka International Industrial Park, the company said.

Speaking at the site, Blake said the United States and Sri Lanka are in the apparel industry together and have a long history of partnership. “Sri Lanka has become a world leader in ethical practices in the garment industry due to the relentless initiatives for best practices including the ‘Garments without guilt’ initiative, good working conditions and sustainable environmental practices.

Sometimes, natural resources may suffer due to industrial development but Textured Jersey Lanka is a good example of how environmentally sustainable practices and good business go hand in hand,” he said.

TJL is a joint collaboration between Pacific Textiles Hong Kong, one of the world’s leading knitwear manufacturers and Brandix Lanka, one of Sri Lanka’s two leading apparel manufacturers. TJL Chairman Bill Lam firmly believes that with this expansion, TJL has become a significant player in the region. “Having supplied fabric to the Sri Lankan apparel industry from its inception, the friendship that Pacific Textiles strengthened over the decades has now transformed into a controlling stake in the company.”

Director of TJL and Managing Director of Brandix Lanka Ashroff Omar explained that the company which was originally a 50:50 joint venture between UK’s Textured Jersey and Sri Lanka’s Linea Clothing, was established to serve the large and expanding Sri Lankan apparel industry. “Overseas customers were exerting pressure on Sri Lanka to reduce its lead times, improve flexibility and invest locally in the downstream supply chain.

Today everyone wants innovation, flexibility and speed at an affordable price and TJL is poised to deliver that. We remain very bullish with this expansion and aim to double the capacity in the next two years.”

The dye house is one of the most modern in the world, and certainly the most modern in all of South and South East Asia and utilizes automated robotized colour control.

The single largest investment has been the company’s fully automated colour kitchen which uses Arel hardware and Colour Service software, both from Italy.