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Surya Packaging Industries produces durable non-woven bags at very low costs |18 December 2017

Surya Packaging Industries is a business set up three months ago specialising in the manufacture of non-woven bags for retail clients.

The family members owning the business comprise R.J. Naidoo (father), Sanjay Naidoo (son) and Bharati Naidoo (mother).

The factory, which has cost R2.5 million, came about just after the ban on plastic bags came into force.

The bags produced by the factory are environmentally-friendly as they are bio-degradable and recyclable. They also come in various sizes and colours like the current red, green and white but customers will have a wider choice of colours very soon like in blue, purple, just to name some.

“After the ban on plastics came into force, that’s when we started looking into the possibility of producing either non-woven bags or paper bags. Unfortunately paper bags were not really well received as they were not able to hold the weight necessary. As for the non-woven bags, each holds a lot of weight, the equivalant of a plastic bag, if not more. That’s why we diversified from paper bags to the non-woven bags,” says Sanjay.

He adds the bags come in six different sizes at the moment but other sizes can be made according to customers’ demands and needs.

“What we are targeting right now is retail clients, basically shops, take-aways, pharmacy stores… But we can do specialised bags if a client says ‘I want this particular size’,” says Sanjay.

As for the colours, Sanjay says they will change the colours a little bit in the next batch going to blue, green, purple. This is because in a container only a certain amount of colours can be fitted in.

“If a customer comes up to us and says he wants this particular colour, we can do it,” Sanjay says, noting that Surya Packaging Industries can also customise the bags for individual customer needs.

In terms of printing, the company has a state-of-the-art four-colour printing machine that can also adjust logos, print individual names, message or event text on the bags.

“So it is very highly-customised bags,” he says.

Giving more details on the non-woven bags, Sanjay says they are recyclable.

“Meaning once they have been used you can melt them down and reform the fabric over and over again,” says Sanjay.

But right now, he says, Surya Packaging Industries is in the process of trying to scrap as they also have a scrap company. So you can reform the bags a million times,” says Sanjay, which means a responsible user does not have to put it in the environment for disposal.

But at the moment, he explains, the company is only collecting the used bags as the business has just started, so  it does not have the quantity enough for export yet.

“But we do collect and keep it aside so when we do have a sufficient quantity we can export as scrap cloth, as this product can also be made from such non-woven materials. The company is now selling the waste cloth as cut pieces by the kilo as rags for people who need them for cleaning and stuff like that,” he says.

With regard to delivery, Sanjay says as not every customer can or is prepared to come to the company’s factory at Providence, the company has an in-house delivery system.

“So basically clients give us a call clarifying the quantity, size and colours wanted. We go deliver it to them as it is not easy for everybody to come and collect the bags here at Providence. But they are available at all retail shops at the moment where shopkeepers are selling them because we do not have a distributor as such. We are all distributors,” he says.

Elaborating on their business idea and intentions, Sanjay says he and his father are both manufacturers. When they set up their businesses they always consider manufacturing.

“We don’t like importing and selling. Mainly because by manufacturing locally, you create an industry, you have employees who are trained in a machinery; you pass on a set of skills and it’s less of a foreign exchange drain on the economy,” he says.

He gave an example of somebody importing bags which, he says, is just importing an end-product. Whereas when his company just imports the raw material to manufacture the bags, the end-products are much cheaper.

“So we are able to give a very good value to our clients compared to the person who is importing because the person at the selling point has already put their profits. And by the time it comes to Seychelles it’s very expensive,” he says.

He notes that such bags were selling between R15 and R20 before they came in, and now the cost the same bag is R2.

“The prices for our bags range from about 60 cents to R3 for the really big bags as wholesale price and depending on the sizes. We sell by the kilos and not per bag. So the huge difference is we manufacture locally versus when we import from overseas. We believe manufacturing creates an industry. It creates an economy of its own. That’s why we decided to go into the manufacturing industry,” says Sanjay.

Sanjay can be contacted on sanjaynaidoo@gmail.com

 

M. Julie

 

 

 

 

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