The Hindu Business Line : Tirupur knitwear units bullish on April-Sept shipments

THE job-working knitwear manufacturing units in the hosiery town of Tirupur are bullish on April-September 2005 work orders from garment exporters. They anticipate the quota-free textile regime during this period will bring in 30 per cent growth in business this year against the average annual growth of 15 per cent seen in past years.

The scaling-up of operation and the new investments that have gone in recent months into the 700-odd job-working units engaged in knit cloth production and the post-knitting processes such as embroidering and fabric finishing, including compacting, raising and sheathing, are all made taking into account the anticipated surge in business this year, according to Mr Ahil Mani, President, Tirupur Industrial Federation (TIF), an apex body of the job-working units in Tirupur.

"Knitwear exporters are poised to get higher orders from buyers/buying houses judging from the current enquiries. The shorter delivery schedules prescribed invariably by the buying agents will amount to more orders for the jobbers as the exporter-manufacturers having their own integrated production facility lacked capacity to match the orders on their hands. On the other hand, many jobbers have already gone in for high speed production lines this year to cater to the former," said Mr Mani.

The Tirupur-based exporting trade is synergised largely by the well knit job-working industries that run through the entire knitwear production chain covering such of those crucial processes such as fabrication of knit cloth and post-fabrication processes such as dyeing, printing, compacting and garmenting. The federation represents bulk of the knit industry's job-working downstream industries engaged in these production processes and it consists of such associations as the South India Imported Machine Knitters Association, the Computer Embroiderers Association, the Knit Compactors Association and the Tirupur Raising Association.

Mr Mani told Business Line that since a major portion of the orders for the export merchandise during April-September is meant to meet winter garment demand and the fabrics to be used in the garments would hence be of heavier construction whose GSM (gm per sq mtre) would weigh anywhere from 250 up to 700. The fashion garments turned out from such higher GSM fabrics in `polar fleece/terri/ velour' finishes would spur demand for hiring a larger capacity from jobbers this time, he added.

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