Tamil Nadu’s spinning industry has a strong reason to cheer as the State Government has announced spinners to avail 6 per cent interest subvention for the modernisation of spinning machines that are over 15 years old for a period of 5 years.
Tamil Nadu’s Department of Handlooms, Handicrafts, Textiles and Khadi, has issued the guidelines in this regard. The Government is immediately allocating Rs. 10 crore for the remaining period of FY 2024-25.
This announcement is highly significant as out of 46 million working spindles in India, more than 2/3rds, nearly 19 million spindles are in Tamil Nadu itself within which over 12 million spindles are over 15 years old.
Industry experts are of the view that the spinning sector has stalled the modernisation of its manufacturing facilities due to prolonged sluggishness in the market, poor export demand as a result of geopolitical issues across the globe, uncompetitive raw material prices, unduly high logistics cost and more.
Dr. S. K. Sundararaman, Chairman, Southern India Mills Association (SIMA) said that this is a much-needed decision to revive Tamil Nadu’s spinning segment as there is a dire need to modernise the spinning units to have a level playing field and compete with other states as well as globally.
“We are grateful that the Government has allocated 60 per cent of the entire project allocation to ring frame modernisation, 15 per cent to air jet spinning/electrospinning, and 25 per cent to open-end spinning modernisation,” he said.
He further added that funding for air jet/electrospinning and open-end spinning will benefit these industries, which produce more than 60 per cent of recycled yarn and almost 70 per cent of VSF yarn, and hence the downstream industries in the Erode and Karur districts.
The Tamil Nadu economy is strongly dependent on the textiles and apparel industry as the State accounts for 1/3rd of India’s textile business including 47 per cent of spinning capacity, 36 per cent of open-end spinning capacity, 60 per cent of yarn export, 20 per cent of powerloom capacity, 12 per cent of handloom capacity and 70 per cent of the knitted garment manufacturing capacity to mention a few.
