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GJRA - GLOBAL JOURNAL FOR RESEARCH ANALYSIS X 1
Volume-4, Issue-3, March-2015 • ISSN No 2277 - 8160
Research Paper Commerce Marketing
An Overview of Tirupur: the Textile city in India
Dr. Yoganandan.G
Assistant Professor of Management Studies K.S.R College of Arts and Science
(Autonomous) Tiruchengode, India
KEYWORDS : Apparel industry, Exporters problems, Textile industry problems,
Tirupur.
Tirupur is a dominant player in the knitting garment sector. The apparel exporters in Tirupur mostly produce and export
knitted garments and the share of woven garment is insignificant when compared with knitted garment production
and exports. Tirupur is known for the cluster activity and mostly each activity of garment making is being carried out in
the outside units viz., knitting units, dyeing & bleaching units, fabric printing, garmenting, embroidery, compacting and calendaring and other
ancillary units. The textile industry in Tirupur is facing many challenges like poor road and other transport infrastructure, labour shortage during
peak season, outdated machineries, pollution, exchange rate fluctuations and cotton yarn price fluctuations and over dependence on cotton.
To encourage apparel exporters to increase the export marketing activity the Indian government has to focus on manpower development and
other innovative methods.
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
The apparel industry in India includes woven and knitted garment
industry.
Tirupur is a dominant player in the knitting garment sector.
The apparel exporters in
Tirupur mostly produce and export knitted
garments and the share of woven
garment is insignificant when
compared with knitted garment production and
exports. In India,
the other major knitted garment production centres are Ludhiana,
Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. This industry is also called as hosiery
sector, hosiery
garment sector, knitted garment apparel sector
and knitted garment sector
(Jayabharathi 2010). Tirupur is spread
over 27.20 sq. kms and the seventh largest town in Tamil
Nadu
and 60 kms. from Coimbatore, the Manchester of Southern India. It
has grown
by encompassing peripheral villages like Avinashi, Nal-
lur, Mangalam, Kangeyam,
Palladam, Koduwai, which are situated
around 15-20 km. radius from Tirupur
(Devaraja TS 2011). Tirupur
is also called as the Knitwear city, Banian city, Kutti
(Small) Japan,
Dollar city and is surrounded by other regions (cities) famous for
their contribution to textile industry (Vetrivel T & Manivannan L
2011). Karur is
situated 80 kilometers east of Tirupur. Karur is famous
for home furnishing textiles.
Erode is 50 kilometers from Tirupur and
is famous for Lungi (Dhotty). Nearby city
Chennimalai is famous
for handloom bed-sheets whereas Bhavani, another town
near
to Tirupur is famous for bed-sheets and carpet and it is pop-
ularly called as
carpet city. The neighbouring Coimbatore city
is known for its machine tools,
pumps, yarn and fabrics. Till
2009, Tiirupur was one of the taluks of Coimbatore
district in Tamil
Nadu. The year 2009 saw the birth of new district Tirupur which
was created by reorganizing the districts of Coimbatore and Erode. The
garment industry employs 2 lakh people in 2008 which increased to
3.5
lakhs in 2010 and nearly 50000 employees commute to Tirupur
every day and the
total population has reached 90 lakhs (Prithi-
viraj 2001; Arun et al 2011; UNIDO-
Report 1997). The advantage
of apparel industry in Tirupur are large and low cost
labour force,
sizable supply of fabric, sufficiency in raw material and spinning
capacities while the shortcomings are labour issues, power cuts,
drinking water
issues, water pollution, air pollution and poor roads
(Devaraja TS 2011). Apparel
industry in Tirupur is predominantly a
small scale industry where large numbers of
players are small ex-
porters. The exporters in Tirupur focus on low-volume
mid-fashion
segment particularly the women and children wear segments.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
The study is based on secondary data sources. The aim of this article
is to disseminate information pertaining to Textile industry in Tirupur
so that the researchers in the future can understand and also address
the challenges faced by the textile exporters.
CAPACITY OF UNITS IN VARIOUS OPERATIONS
Tirupur is known for the cluster activity and mostly each activity of
garment
making is being carried out in the outside units viz.,
knitting units, dyeing &
bleaching units, fabric printing, garment-
ing, embroidery, compacting and
calendaring and other ancillary
units. There were 3000 knitwear exporters, 2000
knitwear domes-
tic business oriented business houses, 1000 garment making units
100 embroidery units, 764 fabric printing units, 100 compacting
units, and 729
dyeing units in 2009 (Office of Special Officer 2009).
PROBLEMS FACED BY APPAREL INDUSTRY IN TIRUPUR
Exports is dependent on many factors including broader mac-
ro
environmental factors, industry related factors and finally at the
micro level
company related factors. The apparel industry in Tirupur
(apparel exporters) faces
many such challenges.
FLUCTUATION IN COTTON YARN PRICE
One of the biggest challenges faced by apparel exporters in Tir-
upur is the
fluctuation in yarn price (Vetrivel T & Manivannan
L 2011). The fluctuations
reduce the exporters‟ confidence in ac-
cepting and executing an export order since
fluctuations create an
uncertain business environment.
EXCHANGE RATE FLUCTUATIONS
The recent months provided the much needed fillip to the ex-
porters in the
form of Indian rupee depreciating against US dollar.
Though the depreciation is a
welcome sign for exporters, the
fluctuations create an uncertainty situation for
exporters decid-
ing the final price for an order. Also, the buyers started ask-
ing
discounts as they also know the benefits that exporters will get
from rupee
depreciation (Vetrivel T & Manivannan L 2011).
POLLUTION
Tirupur faces pollution on many fronts. There is water pollution, air
pollution
and soil pollution. The main reason for soil and wa-
ter pollution is the untreated
effluents from dyeing units that
enter into water bodies (Noyyal River) and fertile
land. From 1980
to 2002, the cumulative pollution load discharged by the Tirupur
units, is estimated to be 2.87 million tonne of total dissolved
solids (TDS) like
chloride and sulphate (Nelliyat, 2007). Around 80
per cent of the pollution load has
accumulated in the Tirupur area.
With an annual average of 617 mm., the quantum
of rainfall is not
enough to reduce the severity of pollution (Arun et al., 2011; Vetrivel T
&
Manivannan L 2011; Karuppusamy 2012).
INADEQUATE NUMBER OF DYEING UNITS
Due to government initiative on containing the water pollution
many dyeing
units were closed down. Now exporters send their fab-
ric/yarn to nearby districts or
to northern states like Gujarat and
Maharashtra for dyeing (Vetrivel T &
Manivannan L 2011). This in-
creases the cost of production and also the lead time.
LABOUR SHORTAGE
Tirupur faces problem of labour shortage of a different kind. There
are job
seekers who after getting a job would not settle with that
GJRA - GLOBAL JOURNAL FOR RESEARCH ANALYSIS X 2
Volume-4, Issue-3, March-2015 • ISSN No 2277 - 8160
REFERENCES [1] Arun, T., Bhalla, S., Fraser, J., & Nicholson, K. (2011). Tirupur knitwear cluster, Tamil Nadu, India. Harvard University. Harvard University. | [2]
Deveraja, T. (2011). Indian textile and garment industry-An overview. New Delhi: Indian Council of Social Science Research. | [3] Jayabharathi.
(2010, January-March). A study on enhancing the learning capability of knitted garment export industry in Tirupur: Emphasis on influencing
factors and opportunities. Journal of Contemporary Rsearch in Management , 89-102. | [4] Karuppusamy, R. (2012). Tirupur exporters and their strength. Global Research Analysis , 1
(5), 05-15. | [5] Nelliyat, P. (2007). Industrial growth and environmental degradation: A case study of Tirupur cluster. Chennai: Madras School of Economics. | [6] Office-of- district-col-
lector. (2013, September 14). Tirupur cluster - A success story. Retrieved September 14, 2013, from Tirupur district: http://tiruppur.tn.nic.in/textile.html | [7] Office-of-Special-Officer.
(2009). Tirupur oru kannottam (Tamil version). Tirupur: State government of Tamil Nadu. | [8] Prithiviraj. (2001). A study on health, safety and environmental concersin the contest
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International Journal of Management, Entrepreneurship & Technology , 1 (1), 44-48. | [10] Sathyapriya, P. (2007). Export performance of the garment industry in Tirupur. PHD Thesis,
Bharathiar University, Department of Commerce, Coimbatore. | [11] Shanmugasundaram, S., Loganathan, G., & Panchanatham, N. (2010). Quality Awareness – An Imperative Need
for Flourishing Knitwear Industry in India. International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance , 1 (3), 309-314. | [12] TEA. (2012, September 14). About TEA. Retrieved September
14, 2012, from Tirupur Exporters Association: http://www.tea-india.org/Pages/aboutus.aspx | [13] TEA. (2012, October). Tirupur knitwear sector's tough times. Asian Textile journal ,
p. 36. | [14] UNIDO-Report. (1997). Diagnostic study: SMS: The cotton knitwear Cluster:Tirupur. UNIDO. | [15] Vetrivel, T., & Manivannan, L. (2011). Problems and prospects of garment
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employer. The employee
turnover is very high in apparel industry
in Tirupur. The reason could be lack of
motivation among employ-
ees as they are not permitted to take part in managerial
deci-
sion making and also they feel that they are underpaid (Shanmu-
gasundaram,
Loganathan & Panchanatham 2010).
OUTDATED MACHINERIES
Though the apparel exporters in Tirupur have taken initiative to
modernise
their production process many exporters are still using
local machineries which are
not world class. As a result, the quali-
ty of finished product is also got affected.
The exporters in order to
cut down the production cost indirectly allow dilution in the
quality of
finished goods (Shanmugasundaram, Loganathan & Panchanatham 2010).
POOR INFRASTRUCTURE
The road facilities, water supply, electricity supply and other
basic
infrastructures are not adequate in Tirupur. Consequently, the
exporters indirectly
bear the burden of delay in transportation,
delay in production, increased cost of
production and poor health
and safety of workers (Arun et al., 2011).
INADEQUATE GOVERNMENT SUPPORT
Though government has taken many steps to promote exports,
they are not
adequate are not effectively reaching the apparel export-
ers.
CONCLUSION
The textile industry is one of the oldest industries that employ mil-
lions of
people throughout the world. Economies engage in inter-
national trade for mutual
gain but the terms of trade can shift
the gain of one member to other member.
The textile industry in
Tirupur is facing many challenges like poor road and other transport
infrastructure, labour shortage during peak season, outdated machin-
eries, pollution, exchange rate fluctuations and cotton yarn price fluc-
tuations and over dependence on cotton. Though the textile industry
in India receives lot of promotional support from government of
India
like duty drawback, textile parks, technology upgradation fund
etc.,
it is not yielding the expected results. To encourag e apparel expo rt ers to
increase the export marketing activity the Indian government has to
focus on manpower development and other innovative methods.
