Nearly 15 textile dyeing and printing mills in Surat have shut down. The reason is high costs and short supply of lignite coal and imported coal. Prices of lignite, imported coal, colours and chemicals have gone up.
The lignite price hike has affected the production cost of textile fabrics as it constitutes around 25 per cent of the production cost to the industry. This time, due to the extremely intense monsoon, the average allocation of 40 per cent of approved capacity (of lignite) has gone down to 20 percent. Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the cost of imported coal has shot up to Rs 8,000 or Rs 9,000 a ton in December this year from Rs 5,400 in June last year.
The industry consumes 80 per cent of imported coal and 20 per cent of lignite in the boiler depending on the quality of textile products and the type of boiler.
Surat is known as India’s textile city. Every day over four crore meters of textile cloth are produced in Surat and passed through different processes of dyeing, printing and packaging. There are around 350 textile dyeing and printing mills in Surat that employ lakhs of migrant labourers.
