Re-emergence of knitted garment sector in West Bengal is likely to give competition to Tirupur, said J Thulasidharan, Chairman of Southern India Mills' Association (SIMA).
Liberal pollution norms, availability of excess water and coal to create steam and abundant workforce at low costs makes West Bengal, emerge as the promising state for garment industry investment.
Moreover, it is easy to bring yarn to the state from Southern states through ships, reducing transportation costs and the state also has large-scale garment units with high productivity norms, added Thulasidharan.
Tirupur houses very less number of vertically integrated garment factories and most of its units have small scale operations. Along with this, workers in most of these units work on outdated technologies.
Water and power supply in the Tirupur region is very costly, as well as charges for dyeing process have increased by Rs 20 to 25 per kg. The garment units are facing labour crunch with increase in labour costs by 20 percent.
These units require proper working capital and do not have facilities for human resource training and development. Furthermore, labour productivity of Tirupur is also very low as compared to West Bengal. Production rate in Tirupur is 10 to 15 pieces per person, while in West Bengal it is 20 to 30 pieces per person.
Fibre2fashion News Desk - India
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