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Tamil Nadu
The strength of weaving together Personality Of The Week
M. Senthil Kumar, Chairman and Managing Director of the Palladam Hi-Tech Weaving Park in the city.
The 65-acre plot in Palladam has well laid-out roads, pavements, street lights, and 92 worksheds. Walk into the workshed and one will be surprised to see that each unit has imported, first-hand, shuttleless looms of leading brands. The display hall has woven shirts, multi-coloured tags, bed lined, table cloth, etc. The entrepreneurs are small-scale weavers who have jointly established projects, some even to the tune of Rs. 1 crore, at the Rs. 250-crore Palladam Hi-Tech Weaving Park.
M. Senthil Kumar, Chairman and Managing Director of the park, played an important role in drawing up the project for it when he was the chairman of the Powerloom Development and Export Promotion Council. He shares his views with M. Soundariya Preetha on the need for such projects.
With an exposure to khadi, handloom, powerloom and made-ups, and nearly three decades experience in the powerloom sector, he was motivated to develop common infrastructure in the powerloom clusters for the benefit of the small-scale units when the Netaji Apparel Park was established in Tirupur for the garment sector.
The Tirupur-Palladam-Kangeyam-Vellakoil-Padiyur was a well-known khadi belt and now has a large number of handlooms and powerlooms. However, most of the weavers in Coimbatore District are job workers. The average size of a unit is 12 looms.
“The apparel sector was modernised. Most of the units had state-of-the-art machinery. So I thought why not a similar project for powerlooms. The park will be an opportunity for technology upgrading and skill development. The outlook of the weavers will also change,” he said. The small-scale weavers will have access to technology and market and this will be an opportunity for them. However, the project initially needed a lot of campaign in the villages to encourage the weavers, he adds.
“They have the basic knowledge and skill. But, no access to technology or market,” he says. So, while drawing up the project, the focus was on ensuring that the existing stakeholders are retained in the globalised scenario. The efforts were to help them improve quality, develop skills and have an exposure to a larger market. They were supported with adequate common infrastructure. As a result, encouraged by the success of the park, several small-scale units outside the park are also upgrading their facilities. Though the implementation process saw several challenges, “The outcome is more than expected. Real success is when the 92 units start seeing profit in business, when they service their loans fully and create brand value for the park. That will be the real challenge,” says Mr. Senthil Kumar.
Though powerloom is basically an unorganised sector, it is changing now and technology levels are going up mainly due to labour shortage. “With the availability of quality yarn, the quality of fabrics have also improved and we are slowly becoming strong in fabric exports.”
China has large-scale weaving facilities and overseas buyers compare our capacities with those of China. So, India should look at integrated set-ups, he says. The weaving parks should focus on specific products to attract buyers. For instance, the Palladam park plans to concentrate on home textiles. If each park specialises in a product, it will help create a brand per park, he adds.
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