Knit city of India "Tirupur"

Tirupur, a small town in the state of Tamil Nadu, started off as a market
for raw cotton back in the day, has today become a strong base for the
setting up of cotton ginning factories. In due course, the local economy
of this South-Indian town gave way to hosiery cluster and is today
known as the countrys biggest knitwear cluster accounting to a
whopping 90% of the nations total knitwear exports. Let us take a
closer look at what is now known as the Knit City of India and rightly
so!
While how the development of Tirupur was initiated still remains hazy,
what is intriguing is that it is assumed that it was a web of small to midsized units that gave way to the what stands today as the hub of
knitwear industry. In majority of the cases the weaving of the fabric is
done outside tirupur, while the processing of the fabric, cutting,
stitching, packing etc are done in Tirupur. It is because of this reason

that job works, contracting and outsourcing are highly popular in this
town. More often than not it is due to this reason that textile units set
up their subsidiaries rather than integrated factories. However, this
difficulty seldom creates any hindrance, and the ever-increasing
businesses in this town stand testimony to this fact!
It was almost about three decades ago, that Tirupur emerged as a
centre for ginning cotton yarn. Today Tirupur has not only proven its
mettle as the textile hub of India, but boasts of providing full time
employments to more than 4,00,000 workers with an average monthly
salary of Rs. 9,000 each. Not surprisingly, the town has gained the
recognition of being the principal source not just for knitwear but also
for hosiery, casual wear as well as sportswear.
The industrial hub of Tirupur has gained support both from the central
as well as the state governments. In order to support the textile
businesses special industrial parks have been set up. Of the 4 major
industrial parks that are still operational in the town, the Nethaji
Apparel Park has the maximum of 53 companies functioning with
overall revenue of Rs.15 Billion from exports. Some of the most
renowned brands of the world including but not limited to Nike, Adidas,
Diesel, Switcher, and Ralph Lauren etc. are known to import
merchandize from Tirupur.
As surprising as it may sound, it was the uncanny, raw and personalised
organisational structure of the industry that this industrial hub is
striving. In fact the norms that govern business practices in Tirupur are
rather informal for the sheer scale of business. What makes it more
interesting is not a lot of textile giants have set up shop in this town,
which makes up for export revenue of an estimated US$ 1 Billion.
While this city has been the mainstay of Indian garment industry for a
while now, it has faced its share of challenges and problems as well.

The biggest problem which tirupur has faced recently is the closure of T
of all dyeing units a few years ago, for polluting the Noyal river. The
units were closed following a court order. The dyeing units started
running in the neighbouring districts of Namakkal and Salem but soon
they closed down too. Dyeing makes up 35 per cent of the total cost of
the finished product so its closure really affected business
here. Because of this the dyeing costs have increased exponentially as
there are only few dyeing units in tirupur which have the financial
muscle to install recycling plants to purify the waste. This has resulted
in a substantial loss of business to tiurpur over last few years as
business has moved to Bangladesh because of cost factors.
However with the initiatives of Central & State governments there are
many subsidies & helps provided to the small/medium scale units ti set
up recycling plants so as to reduce costs and increase output. We hope
that with proactive initiatives from both government & exporters
tirpurs knit industry and come back on track soon and provide
contribute to the growth of Indian economy.