GUWAHATI: Leading mattress and home furniture brand, Kurl-on will start production for the first time in the Northeast from March 2019.
The 56-year-old homegrown company is setting up a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility at Balipara in Sonitpur district of central Assam for which a 15-acre plot is in the process of being acquired from the state government.
“We will be investing about Rs 100crore on the plant, including land and machinery. The construction will take place once the agreement is finalized in about three weeks’ time while the equipment will be installed subsequently,” Sudhakar Pai, chairman and managing director of Kurl-on, told The Shillong Times here on Friday.
Kurl-on already has 10 strategically located manufacturing facilities across Karnataka, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Uttaranchal and Gujarat.
The Assam facility, which will have a capacity of manufacturing between 5000 and 6000 mattresses per day, will be the company’s second state-of-the-art plant after another was recently set up in Bhubaneswar.
“We will employ about 400 people at the plant in the first phase and another 400 in the second. About 95 per cent of the employees will be from the Northeast.
On the raw material for the Balipara plant, he said that since coir, a principal ingredient for mattresses, is locally available, access to it would not be a problem. “Bulk of the coir comes from Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu,” Pai said.
Asked about its retail expansion, he said that the plan is to have about 100 exclusive stores in the Northeast by the end of 2019. “We currently have 42 exclusive stores apart from over 100 multi-brand outlets. The expansion plan will cover Meghalaya as well, where we have three exclusive outlets and eight multi-brand stores,” Pai said, after the launch of a range of sag-free mattresses here.
The innovative “STR8 technology” provides the right balance of firmness and softness in mattresses enabling appropriate muscle relaxation and growth. Additionally, it makes the mattress 20-40 per cent lighter, making it easy to use and maintain.
The north eastern region is among the brand’s fastest growing, having grown by 39 per cent in the last year to contribute to 5.5 per cent of its sales. The total market share of the company in the Northeast is about 70 per cent.