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The nature of mill production has some basic
differences in Bangladesh and India. There
are 219 jute mills in Bangladesh. Among them
86 are under Bangladesh Jute Spinners
Association (BJSA), 106 are under Bangladesh
Jute Mills Association (BJMA) of which 88
are running and 27 are under Bangladesh Jute
Mills Corporation (BJMC). While in India
there are 83 mills most of which are
composite mills.
India is the leading jute goods producing
country in the world accounting for 70% of
estimated world production primarily because
of large number of composite mills. The
average production of jute goods is around
1530,000, and average domestic demand is
around 1350,000 MT a year with minor
variations. These jute mills employed
approximately 49, 314 permanent workers and
1, 57, 789 other workers.
There are
are 1, 65, 501
(approximately) workers
employed in the jute mills of Bangladesh.
The average production of BJSA mills, BJMA
mills and BJMC mills are
422,000, 160,000 and 172,923 MT
of jute products respectively.
Among these the BJSA mills export 3, 42, 195
MT of yarns/twines while BJMA and BJMC
export 48, 000 MT and 21,000 MT of hessian
and sackings mainly to Middle East
countries, Europe, USA, etc.
Yarn sector in Bangladesh has flourished
tremendously over the last decade compared
to the composite mills. The closed mills of
various countries (Algeria, Italy, France,
Belgium, UK, Bulgaria, Brazil, Thailand,
etc.) have been relocated in Bangladesh
which started production of jute yarns of
various counts to meet the requirement of
foreign consumers. In 2011 Bangladesh
exported about 3, 93,000 MT of jute yarn to
various countries, Turkey being the lead
importer with 37% of the total yarn export.
Composite mills, however, could not fare so
well because of shrinkage of export market
for hessian, carpet backing cloth, etc.
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As recognized by most studies, modernization
would include development and adoption of
new generation machinery as jute needs to be
processed at a technological level
equivalent to that used by other fibres for
its survival against the competition from
competing alternative fibres. New machinery
need to be designed to process greater
volumes, process faster with higher
standards, consume less power and be cheaper
and easy to maintain. Electronic retrofits
need to be introduced in these machines for
effective quality control and continuous
monitoring.
Modern machinery which can be adapted to
work successfully with jute are high output
spreaders, new design high output Breaker
and Finisher cards, high speed & high output
drawing frames, ring twisters, shuttle less
looms, precision winders, etc. Installation
of shuttle less looms like Sulzer, STB,
Dornier, ATPR, etc would improve the
productivity and quality as well. Ring
spinning may be adopted to produce fine
yarns which will be subsequently used in
making light weight fabrics to be used for
making various products like shopping bags,
decorative, household items, handicrafts,
etc. Establishment of an automatic jute bag
sewing unit would increase the productivity
to a great extent.
A number of jute mill machinery
manufacturers like Lagan Engineering Company
Ltd, Milltex Engineering (P) Ltd, GSL, India
and Zhejiang Golden Eagle Co., Ltd, China
manufacture and supply jute processing
machinery to the jute industry of Bangladesh
and India.
Government of India is currently
implementing a project on ‘Jute Technology
Mission (JTM)’ for overall development of
the jute sector in India. Under Mini Mission
IV of JTM, a Scheme for Machinery
Development has been earmarked for
technology up gradation in the jute
industry. Several mills have taken subsidy
benefits under the scheme and have gone
mostly for partial replacement and
modernization. The scheme is also supporting
a modern machinery development program with
Lagan Engineering Company. |
