Govt help sought to set up plug and play garment stitching facilities in small towns

Coimbatore: The Indian Texpreneurs Federation (ITF) has appealed the state government to facilitate the small and medium apparel and home textiles sector to expand by setting up plug and play garment stitching facilities in small towns.
“We can pick 10 to 15 small towns with good workforce availability and create small plug and play infra for stitching facilities. This will spread the sector in various parts of our state and help avoid overcrowding in a few clusters. This will also create new employment in small towns,” ITF said in a memorandum to textiles minister R Gandhi and industries minister Thangam Thennarasu.
Giving a five-point suggestion for growth of the textile sector in the state, ITF convenor Prabhu Damodharan and board member Saravanan, who met the ministers, said the state could work out a roadmap to capitalize on the opportunity emerging with MITRA park scheme by creating an integrated plug and play apparel park to build scale, competitiveness and enable the medium sized companies to expand.
Underlining the need to devise a special theme to brand the textile and apparel sector in the state as the most sustainable destination for fashion sourcing, ITF said such a branding would also help the sector capture the market share in value-added products.
Pointing to the good trade relationship between the state and Japan, ITF said the state government could facilitate a working group with 50 apparel companies to work exclusively with the Japanese apparel market.