Agra footwear firms to collaborate with local units

Having failed to draw the UP government's attention towards the pending development projects worth around Rs 60 crore for manufacturing footwear components, the Agra footwear industry is now looking at collaborating with the local foundry industry to develop ancillary units for manufacturing components like rivets, buckles, and sole dies most of which are currently imported at high cost.

Talking to Business Standard, Haji Rasheedo, owner of a small-scale footwear manufacturing unit in the Mantola area of the town, said currently the sole-dies had to be imported from China as attempts to produce quality sole-dies locally had not succeeded till date.

He said some footwear sole manufacturers, who were unable to import the sole-dies from China, were buying them from some selected die manufacturers in Mumbai. But either way, the cost of importing a die was so high that changing sole patterns frequently could not be possible without incurring heavy losses.

Similarly, he said, rivets, eyelets etc. were also being imported currently, mostly from China, even though Agra had a booming foundry industry that manufacture these crucial components locally, thus bringing down the costs of footwear manufacturing.

Thus, this could help the Agra footwear industry in giving close competition to Chinese footwears, which are benefiting due to low costs.

According to AS Rana, chairman, Agra Footwear Manufacturers & Exporters Chamber, projects like the agra footwear components park, footwear-specific SEZ and others had failed due to lack of support on part of the state government, which had not provided any help to the localfirms in procuring land for setting up these projects.

Now the only hope for the footwear industry was to collaborate with the local foundry units and take the help of their ancillary units for manufacturing and supplying crucial footwear components, he added.

Puran Dawar, managing director, Dawar Footwear Industries said for an industry that had almost completely collapsed after the fall of Russia, the Agra footwear industry has risen from ashes, building up exports to almost Rs 1,300 crore this year.

But unless the footwear components and designs were produced locally, with enough skilled labourers, the target of Rs 3,000-crore footwear exports by the end of the decade will remain a dream, he said.