Vardhman Polytex is a textile maker that became a land company. After decades as a yarn manufacturer, a spiral of ageing machines, high costs and mounting debt pushed it into distress - its bank accounts were classified as non-performing and its net worth was wiped out. The company’s response has been to systematically shut its factories and reclassify the land underneath them as real-estate inventory, turning a manufacturing crisis into a property-monetisation story.
Business segments
Two engines at opposite ends of their life cycle - a shrinking yarn operation that now runs on a single plant and a nascent real-estate bet built on the land freed up by factory closures.
1. Textiles: the legacy engine, now stripped to one plant
What remains is a single operational factory making cotton and blended yarns, run largely as a job-work operation for a handful of customers.
- One plant left standing - of three manufacturing sites, only the Nalagarh unit in Himachal Pradesh was still running as of the latest financial year; the Bathinda unit was closed in FY24 because deteriorating machines made it unviable, and the Ludhiana unit followed in March 2025 so its land could be monetised.
- Old machines, squeezed margins - most of the company’s spindles are old, which means inconsistent yarn quality and higher power, yield and wastage costs than rivals running newer automated machinery; the company has not spent meaningfully on modernisation in six to seven years.
- A job-work model in practice - the company has arrangements with a few vendors where it buys raw material from them, processes it into finished yarn, and sells the output straight back to them, so it is effectively earning a conversion fee rather than taking full merchant risk.
- Customer concentration is extreme - the top five buyers accounted for roughly 84% of sales in FY24, and the figure has been close to 88% in earlier years, which means the loss of one relationship would gut the top line.
- Two in-house brands, but limited reach - it markets ZOYA (100% compact cotton yarn) and SHAKTI (poly-cotton blended yarn) domestically, though the business model relies on long-term wholesaler relationships rather than a broad retail or brand-driven pull.
2. Real estate: the pivot, built on closed factory land
The company is converting the land under its shuttered Bathinda and Ludhiana mills into saleable residential, industrial and commercial plots - a bet that the property is worth more than the factories ever were.
- Land reclassified as inventory - in December 2024, the Bathinda land moved from “fixed assets” to “inventory” on the books, formally creating a Real Estate segment alongside textiles; the Ludhiana land has also been moved on the balance sheet from a fixed asset to inventory as of the cited dates, while the board plans to monetize it pending government approvals.
- Bathinda is zoned for housing - the Bathinda Development Authority has given a no-objection to establish a residential colony on the site, though the final saleable area and a full market valuation are still to be determined.
- Ludhiana is a broader canvas - the plan for the Ludhiana land is to carve it into industrial, residential and commercial plots under the local development authority’s rules, and the board has already approved selling it in one or more tranches to non-promoter buyers.
- Proceeds have a named purpose - cash from land sales is earmarked to repay lender liabilities and strengthen the ongoing business, and the company has already used debt-market proceeds to fully settle its main restructured loan with Phoenix ARC.
Group structure and partners
The company is a standalone Oswal-group entity with no subsidiaries, a single operational mill, and a debt load that has been restructured and then largely cleared through a mix of settlements and fresh fundraising.
- No subsidiaries or joint ventures - a former Austrian subsidiary was liquidated in FY22 with no consideration received, and as of the latest filings the company has no subsidiaries, associates or foreign collaborations.
- Promoters hold steady at around 60% - an indirect inter-se transfer of promoter-company shares within the Oswal family in 2022 left the group’s total 60.16% stake in Vardhman Polytex unchanged.
- Debt was pooled into one ARC, then settled - loans from seven banks were assigned to Phoenix ARC, which restructured the debt into a single facility repayable by September 2026; the company then fully repaid Phoenix ARC in April 2026 using proceeds from listed non-convertible debentures, but took a conservative view and did not write back the difference in the period, with the appropriate treatment to be taken up in the quarter ending June 2026.