Business

Texpreneurs Seek Policy To Strengthen Textile Manufacturing In Tamil Nadu State

Tamil Nadu-based textile entrepreneurs have begun lobbying the state government for improved infrastructure for weaving and processing capabilities in the state, even as the state is in the process of drafting a new textile policy after about eight years.

Indian Texpreneurs Federation Secretary Prabhu Damodharan, who is also a Coimbatore-based spinning mill owner has stated that it is the right time for Tamil Nadu to devise a policy specific to manufacturing competitiveness in the spinning sector in order to compete with the kind of factories coming up in Gujarat.

Bureaucrats from the state of Tamil Nadu have already held discussions with entrepreneurs on how the policy could differ from competing states like Gujarat, which has built strong capacities in yarn spinning through state-sponsored subsidies to build factories.

Textile units are also seeking subsidies for companies venturing into weaving and processing units, which are areas in apparel making that lead to value addition as well as higher margins for businesses.

Incidentally, weaving and processing have been perceived by entrepreneurs as weak spots in the Tamil Nadu apparel supply chain, which need to be addressed.

In Tamil Nadu, weaving clusters like Salem still run on obsolete technologies involving power looms, which have been surpassed by automatic looms manufactured by Sulzer.

The latest advancement is the air jet loom, which constitutes only a tenth of the looms used in Tamil Nadu, while there has been higher adoption of such looms in other states.