September 18th

Netaji Apparel Park

We visited Netaji Apparel Park in Tirupur. Completed in 2005 this park was established to bring many manufactures of knitwear apparel together in one place. It is now one of nine apparel parks with another ten planned. It was brought about by pressure from international brands for production facilities comparable to those in developed countries in terms of compliance with social accountability standards, quality and environment management systems, working conditions and work environment.  There are 30 to 40 companies in the park each has a share in the park according to their size. It does not manufacture or dye fabric onsite the businesses only cut and sow fabric. The park is now planning to vertically integrate they are planning on establishing Cotton plantations, gins and spinners along similar lines. 

We also visited one of the factories sowing the apparel which was a real eye opener. It was very clean, well set up and very well run, a good example of the strong standards that they need to comply to. The factory runs 24hrs/day in two shifts.The companies in the park find it difficult to compete on price with China & Bangladesh, however they have built strong relationships with their customers which is ensuring their success. Their customers include LAPD, GAP clothing, Crew, Marks & Spencer.

Our second stop for the day was a Organic fertiliser business run by our good friend & guide Ramesh. We received a wonderful welcome from his loyal hardworking staff. Ramesh is turning cane waste from a local sugar cane refinery into phosphorus enriched compost. Together with another business he has isolated microbes from cow manure which have enabled him to speed up the composting process from 120 days to just 30 days, and with new developments is hoping to reduce this to just 15 days. The fertiliser is producing dramatic increases in production on the cane farms. Presently with the help of the fertiliser the yields are about 100t/ha, they believe they can push this up to 250t/ha. The compost is applied at 1.25t/ha and across three plants Ramesh is producing about 30,000t of fertiliser