Tirupur textile industry hopes to bounce back

First cluster to achieve Zero Liquid Discharge

Country's knitwear hub Tirupur in Southern Tamil Nadu has become the first textile cluster in India to arrive at the Zero Liquid Discharge Technology. It may be noted, the Madras high Court earlier directed the dyeing & processing industry in Tirupur to shut stating that the units are creating pollution problem. This inturn had a severe impact on the Rs 12,000 crore textile industry in Tirupur.

In a statement today Tirupur Exporters Association President and Chairman AEPC A Sakthivel said that at present all Dyeing & Processing units are using 100% Zero Discharge technology and units in Tirupur created and generating more than 2000 MW in Wind Mill Energy.

“With this development we are sure that Tirupur will back to normalcy and there will be upward progress in supplies to both in domestic and international markets and will catch up by the time global economic slowdown ends up”.

He added, now both Common Effluent Treatment Plants (CETPs) and Individual units are following this ZLD technology and are meeting the requirements of the trade and servicing the requirements. More than 50% of total units are running, 494 Dyeing units and 162 bleaching units were there before closing down due to court order. There are 16 CETPs under operation out of 18 now.

On energy front, he said the industry is facing problem in running the units and incurring more operational cost due to heavy load shedding and due to usage of diesel gensets.

The industry will explore various ways and means to live-up to the expectations of their sourcing people both domestic and international, even if they have to do business with minor losses / minor margins, since this is a temporary phase and we have to continue with textile business to go a long way and he was bullish on the sector while stating that bottlenecks in the past include sudden increase in yarn prices, sudden close down of Dyeing & Processing units and to add to that economic slowdown in our traditional markets i.e., USA & Europe.