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Kolkata: July 07,
2007: Revival and growth of jute industry is hardly possible unless it gets modernized and technologically upgraded without any further delay. In fact, the 150-year-old industry with 75% obsolete machinery is generally tagged as ‘sunset industry’ with ‘vintage machinery’.
As far machines available in international markets, there was nothing but copies of the-then UK-based James Mackie versions or newly-painted secondhand jute machinery in some overseas countries, which have been dismantled by their jute mills as clumsy, unremunerative and labor-intensive. Understandably, some jute mills exported these secondhand jute machines to India for modernization. Admittedly, the local jute industry has gathered from the Union government and UNDP project I&II that machine-building and development require gestation time of at least three to five years to freeze design, prototype development, trial run, correction and gaining confidence.
In fact, jute machines like spreaders, cards and drawing (rotary) being produced now are nothing more than copying the existing ones. As such, these machines have limited output quality and scope for new development. In other words, engaging small venders in machine-building and development has failed to deliver efficient machines.
All these only pinpoint research and development (R&D) for modernization and quality improvement of domestic jute products requires huge investment at national level and setting up a central R&D cell on jute by drawing nationally reputed scientists, textile engineers and designers from national research organisation like BITRA, SITRA, ICAR and IJIRA. Simultaneously, efforts should be made for improving yield, quality and blending strength of raw jute, so that it could bear the speed of the new-generation machines.
Source: The Economic Times, Kolkata
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