Karur Home Textiles Industry – An Overview
R.S BALAKUMAR
Associate Professor (SFDA)
Hindustan University, Chennai
Cell: +91-9283182955
Email: rsbalakumar1953@gmail.com
Karur in Tamil Nadu state has become identical with handloom and power loom “made-ups” products. Made-ups are more essential to all the human-beings living in the world. Handloom exports from Karur began on an unassertive scale with just meagre number of exporters in the year around 1975. But Karur is famous for its home textiles industry.
Today Karur has thousands of exporters and also their products are being exported to the International leading chain stores. Due to this healthy atmosphere India is enormously gaining its foreign exchange in recent period.
Karur, one of the oldest towns in Tamil Nadu, has played a significant role in the history and culture of Tamils. Its history dates back over 2000 years, and was a flourishing trading centre in the early Sangam days. It was ruled by the Cheras, Gangas, Cholas, Vijayanagara Nayaks, Mysore and British successively.
The town of Karur, positioned on the banks of Amravati, is a municipality and headquarters of Karur district. The district itself has a very gorgeous and varied cultural legacy. Karur made-ups are very famous in international level .
Hand-woven home textile products are very much attracted the foreign buyers. Agreeing to the 2011 census, Karur municipality had a population of 10 lakh, and a literacy rate of 78 per cent against the Indian national average of 59.5 per cent
The home textiles industry of Karur can broadly be classified into five groups:
- Bed linen,
- Kitchen linen,
- Toilet linen,
- Table linen and
- Wall hangings.
Overall, according to the recent status Karur makes around Rs 6,000 crore ($300 million) a year in foreign exchange through direct and indirect exports. With associated industries like ginning and spinning mills, dyeing factories, weaving, around 3.5 lakh people are labouring in and around the place called the “Karur” or in this made-up manufacturing hub.
On the world-wide textiles atlas, Karur has become identical with handloom “made-ups” like Tirupur in Tamil Nadu state is recognized for all types of knitted and hosiery products. Handloom exports from Karur began on a unassertive scale with just 15 exporters in 1975, and today Karur has thousands of exporters and products are supplied to world’s leading chain stores are listed below:
1.Wal-Mart, 2.Target, 3.IKEA, 4.JC Penny, 5.Ahlens, 6.Metro, 7.Carrefour, etc. Today, the Karur Textiles Manufacturers Exporter Association has a membership base of nearly 143.
Almost 600-700 small-medium and micro enterprises are involved in the textile export professional. Most of these elements are family-oriented initiatives and have manifestation in the entire value chain of the fabrication processes. By and huge, these are spread in a 40 km span of Karur.
The Karur Textile Park Limited (KTPL) project has been executed under the Scheme for Integrated Textiles Park (SITP) of the Indian Ministry of Textiles. This is one of the ten textile parks that have been approved for the state of Tamil Nadu. The main activity in KTPL is weaving of fabrics for home textiles made-ups.
KTPL is located near Manalmedu (Thalapatti and Puthampur villages) which is about 12 km from Karur town, and is blow-outover thezone of nearly 110 acres.
The textile park was inaugurated during the year 2011, with a funding of Rs 40 crore from the Union government and Rs 9 crore from the state government. The accepted project cost is Rs 116.10 crore, but the authentic amount spent for this scheme so far has been Rs 135 crore.
Separately from this, aventure of Rs 100 crore has been made by members towards machinery in their units. Hence, the total investment made in the park comes nearly Rs 235 crore.
Karur Textile Park is unique as the following activities are assumed in the site itself, and no such procedures are permitted out in parks elsewhere in the country, as mentioned below:
- Yarn procurement;
- Hank to cone winding;
- Cone to cone winding;
- Sizing;
- Warping;
- Weaving;
- Fabric checking;
- Cutting;
- Sewing;
- Folding and
- Packing for export.
Contracts are awarded through formal tender procedures, and all the works are completed in full.
The predictable direct employment for KTPL is expected to be 3,000-5,000, and indirect employment is for about 10,000 people. The villagers within a 25 kmcircle are anticipated to advantage from this chance. Presently, about 1,750 workers are directly workingin the units situated in the textile park.
Ten-steps towards succeeding potential:
- Requirement of trained manpower keeping fit to empower existing unskilled, semi-skilled manpower.
- Elimination of blockages in creating home textile industries, which need a textile processing park with the care of government agencies.
- Continuous electric-power supply to be provided.
- Industry-friendly and merchandisable textile industry policy.
- Simple infrastructure to be improved at cluster level.
- Enlightening town infrastructure along with decent water supply, cleanliness, sustainable road facilities, increased rail connectivity, etc.
- Sinkingintricate government agreements.
- Availability of raw materials in normal price / variations to be controlled at least for the sector.
- Control in forcemoneys through a standard machinery.
- Value addition to the prevailing marketable home furnishing products.
Most exporters in Karur follow to international certification requirements as per the purchasers’ needs.
The common certifications include the following 12 certifications are required.
- SA 8000 – Social Accountability System
- ISO 9001 – Quality Management System(Qms)
- ISO14001 – Environment Management System(Ems)
- OHSAS 18001 – Occupational Health & Safety Assessment Series
- OEKO TEX 100
- C-TPAT / GSV – Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism
- ORGANIC – Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS)
- ORGANIC – OE Organic Exchange
- COC – Code of Conduct of the respective Buyers
- Fair Trade
- Reach
- BSCI
Salient Features of The Karur Home Textiles Industry:
Around will be 35 factory buildings in KTPL. These 35 units will operate here everlastingly in addition to their existing main factories in Karur, so as to switch on more orders. Three types of factory buildings are being constructed.
- An exclusive Admin Block to handle the operations of the Park.
- In the Facility Building area, outside the park compound wall, there would be the following facilities:
- Canara Bank branch with ATM facility .(functional since the year 2011);
- Sewage Treatment Plant has been fitted and working to treat sewage waste from units inside the park.
- Overhead tank with 1 lakh litre capacity sump has been constructed and is in use for the water necessity of the whole park;
- A rainwater pool has been dug up for rainwater harvesting.
- Other accommodations areplanned to set up in due course.
- The constructions of the buildings have been completed.
- The highpoint of KTPL is that people from nearby villages can avail of these amenities, which can also be used by the mobile population on NH-7 since the Park is situated on the Karur-Madurai Highway.
- The water supply has been organized from Kodaiyur, off Amravati River, and pipelines have been laid for the supply of water to separate units.
- A lot of trees have been established inside the campus.
- The main roads are nearly30 metre wide and sub-roads are nearly 20 metre wide. All roads have been laid.
- Rainwater drainage and sewage lines have been laid properly and are in practise.
- KTPL has obtained its own Electricity Board transformers and handed over to Tamil nadu Electricity Board. The cost of LT line cable and the UG cable have been accepted by Karur Textile Park Ltd.(KTPL)
- More employment opportunities are available in the Karur home textiles industries. Due to this situation employees are gaining monetary benefits and living happily with their family members.
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Founder & Editor of Textile Learner. He is a Textile Consultant, Blogger & Entrepreneur. Mr. Kiron is working as a textile consultant in several local and international companies. He is also a contributor of Wikipedia.