India's Largest Carpet Producer

For India's new Parliament building, 900 weavers worked 1 million hours each to create hand-knotted carpets. The company dies all its yarn in-house and its workers load up machines that can hold up to 880 pounds of yarn. the batch first goes through a chemical wash then they prepare the dyes which are made from chemicals and natural ingredients, like fruits and bark. obti takes a sample to the lab and runs a series of tests to make sure the color won't rub off. weavers can't get started until they have the map or naksha, which they have to follow in granular detail. each square represents a knot and a specific yarn color. the company has its own weaving center with 224 artisans, who use a drum to build the carpet's foundation or warp. but some build it by hand, which can take a full day. honey OBT works with over 25,000 local weavers like ramlal, who've been working with the company for about 50 years. once the warp is done, he starts laying down the design thread by thread, some of which have over 2 million knots. foreign company officials inspect the work on each one of obt's 5,000 looms every 15 days. once each carpet is finished and approved, weavers deliver it to the factory. foreign workers use a blowtorch to burn off loose fibers; teams of washers give the carpet a scrub; everything starts with water dowsing; a chemical treatment gets rid of dust; right here; foreign carpets shrink during washing phase so they have to be stretched back out; once they're dry; they clip and shear carpet's surface to a specific height; machines help but they mostly have to do this by hand; they also straighten and bind edges and trim or not any fringes after two more rounds of inspection; the carpets are ready for delivery; it takes hundreds of workers to keep this operation going; but the company has struggled to find new weavers. uttar Pradesh is one of India's poorest states and young people are moving away to find better paying jobs. many of obesity's weavers are also farmers. OBT has been trying to boost its workforce by recruiting more women, but so far that's not been successful: only about 25 percent of working age women in India are part of the labor force. veteran weavers like ramlal have trained almost 2,000 women since 2015.,and they're keeping standards high.