In the past few years, the dyestuff industry has transformed significantly. This is considered to be due to the rise in use of dyestuffs in sectors like printing inks, plastics, textiles, paper and foodstuff. Globally, China, India, Japan, Korea, etc. are the major dyestuff manufacturing & Textile processing countries where India's share is about 8%, while leading contributor is China with 25% share. The dyestuff market is mostly dominated by Reactive & Disperse dyes.
The textile industry is comprised of a diverse, fragmented group of establishments that receive and prepare fibres, transform into yarn, covert the yarn into fabric and then dye at various stages of garment manufacturing. The contribution of dyestuff industry in wet processing operations is enormous. Textile colour is a major quality parameter demanded by customers.
Cotton is the backbone of the worlds textile trade. It has many qualities and countless end uses, which make it one of the most abundantly, used textile fibres in the world. It is a seed hair of plant of genus Gossypium, the purest form of cellulose found in nature. Some of the key steps in the treatment of cotton material include singeing, desizing, scouring, bleaching, mercerizing followed by dyeing and finishing. However, cotton is one of the most problematic fibres as far as its general wet processing operations are concerned. Quite frequently, the problems in dyed cotton materials are not due to the actual dyeing process, but due to some latent defects introduced from previous production and processing stages. Often, the root cause(s) of a problem in the dyed material can be traced as far back as to the cotton field. Defects in dyed cotton materials can be attributed to innumerable causes ranging from poor quality of fibre, faulty spinning, inappropriate yarn package formation, improper weaving or knitting, impurities in water, poor standardization of dyes and chemicals, lack of control of the variables in the processes involved, machine malfunctions to human errors, etc.
Source: Technical Service, Atul Ltd (Colors Division), Atul - Valsad, Gujarat, India