The Indian Government has announced the launch of a new initiative SAATHI (Sustainable and Accelerated Adoption of efficient Textile technologies to Help Small Industries), a joint collaboration of Ministry of Textiles and Ministry of Power, to encourage small powerlooms to adopt energy efficient technologies and reduce cost.
Under this initiative, Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), a public sector entity under Ministry of Power, would procure energy efficient powerlooms, energy efficient IE3 motors and Rapier kits in bulk and will provide to small and medium powerlooms at no upfront cost.
The pilot study will include powerloom clusters at Ichalkaranji, Bhiwandi, Erode, Surat, Bhilwara and Panipat.
The unit owners will repay the installments to EESL over a period of 4 to 5 year, with the savings up to 10-15 per cent that accrue as a result of higher efficiency equipment and cost savings.
The benefits contributed by the aggregation of demand and bulk procurement will cut down on the repayment period and amount. The powerloom owners do not have to allocate any upfront capital cost to procure these equipments and also need not to allocate extra expenditure for repayment.
The Indian powerloom sector is mainly an unorganized sector and has over 24.86 lakhs units. These micro and small units account for 57 per cent of the total fabric production, but still operate on old and obsolete technologies.
