An Interview with Mr Anees M Khawaja Director. Mahmood Group. Pakistan

TEXtalks: Can you give some pointers on the history of Mahmood Group and the capacities of yarn production?
Anees M Khawaja: Mahmood group is the family owned business, textile group based in Multan and it’s almost been 100 years since we started in 1935. At the moment, we employ around 10,000 people. As of the last numbers, we are the fifth largest textile exporters of Pakistan. With new expansions, we are hoping to increase on that ranking as well.

TEXtalks: What part does US Cotton play and how much cotton is being utilized by Mahmood Group on an annual basis?
Anees M Khawaja: In total with our recent capacities, in Mahmood Group, we are touching around 175,000 tons of cotton consumption annually, and with some expansions with the recent policy given by the State Bank of Pakistan, we are probably targeting to go to around 190,000-195,000 tons. Unfortunately, with the recent issues of Pakistani crop, we at the moment are also one of the largest importers of cotton in Pakistan. Our total imports are around 80-85% of our consumption and being an advocate of US cotton for many years, I believe, around 45% of our imports would be of the US cotton.

TEXtalks: What Key Advantages you are availing of by using US Cotton?
Anees M Khawaja: One of the most important advantage by the US cotton is always the contamination free aspects and if you are wearing a white shirt with a high-quality parameter, you can’t afford contamination at all. Very less cottons in the world have this aspect that they are machine patent and also, they are contamination free 100%.But more importantly, I think the trust on the products and what we are buying, we know the quality is going to be exactly the same because of the USDA standards and the Green Cards classification elements which really top all others.

TEXtalks: How do you see the quality of US cotton for the production of your textile products?
Anees M Khawaja: We always get a premium, but of course, we also pay a premium for the US cotton. There is always a niche products requirement, the other crops in the world are trying to catch up with US cotton as a benchmark. But still the COTTON USA™  brand has a value, similar to Supima’s brand value.  Now more initiatives are coming in from COTTON USA team, as they are bringing in a lot of advantages where we believe that we can create niche product in the future also.

TEXtalks: With international brands, what is the acceptability of the products that are being manufactured by using US cotton?
Anees M Khawaja: The benchmark is the US cotton and the small gimmicks coming in from other regions, which as the world we want to promote, I think it is predominantly US cotton which brings in that niche and catch where brands are attracted towards this.

TEXtalks: Do you know the initiative of the US cotton industry towards sustainability (USCTP)? Your views to supply sustainable products to your customers?
Anees M Khawaja: Basically, sustainability and innovation are extremely important at the moment. The US cotton industry have been the pioneers in the cotton world; and, the recently created a new benchmark of the sustainability programs. Now sustainability has to go with industry 4.0 innovation as well. And we’re expecting that the US cotton and CCI will be bringing in this versatility and this aspect of sustainability to a much larger mass scale which we need as a nation and globally.

TEXtalks: Would you like to give a few words of suggestions or a glimpse into what you would be expecting in the coming future?
Anees M Khawaja: I believe that sustainability has to work with industry 4.0 concept, we have been evolving from industry 1.0 to 2.0 and now getting 4.0 where the right kind of automation is needed for us to excel, not just in our production facility, but as human beings as well. We need to understand that if the raw material and cotton can be reused, we need to use it. Sustainability would mean lesser consumption of water and the optimum utilization of the resources so, elements like Lead certification, water resource right allocation and then adding it to the right data, which can be derived out of industry 4.0, is very critical. These two elements will probably be helping us in achieving the next step as the textile world.