World Cup churn for Jalandhar football manufacturers

Keeping an eye on the expected boom in export orders because of the upcoming soccer World Cup in Germany, football manufactures of the city are geared up to meet the challenge in meeting demand from all over the world.

"There is lot of hustle bustle in football manufacturing units as well as other connecting units as most of them have already increased their production at least three times due to expected hike in the demand of footballs all over the world due to the World Cup, which comes after four years", Satish Wassan, regional director of the Sports Goods Export Promotion Council told Business Standard.

Although Indian units do not get orders for the balls with which the matches to be played, but as the game has maximum fans in the world, demand for promotional balls were expected to be huge before and after the World Cup, he added.

Wassan said there were almost 100 football manufacturing units in the city. He said the craze for football could be judged from that fact that out of total Rs 400 crore of sports goods exported from the city, share of footballs was almost Rs 200 crore.

This year the export of footballs was almost 8 per cent more than the previous year and with the upcoming World Cup next year it would be almost double as during those days many promotional schemes will be launched throughout the world. To attract more fans for the game almost every country launches extensive special promotional campaign.

Compare to the previous World Cup, this time there was better opportunity of getting bulk orders for Indian units due to the liberalisation of import policy on raw material, Wassan said adding that even the efforts of Indian entrepreneurs to develop United States as big market of Football would yield results during the upcoming World Cup.

Asked why Indian footballs were not approved by the Fifa, the international football authority, Wassan said since Pakistan's units had an edge over Indian units from the very beginning, bulk order of the playing balls and even promotional balls went to the neighbouring country.

Wassan said Pakistan had an edge because of availability of raw material of international quality. Multi-national companies like Adidas, Puma had set up specialised units in Pakistan and they got raw material at cheaper rates and finer quality, he added.

India, which always wanted to be self-reliant in the every field including manufacturing of the raw material also, could not deliver results as compared to the MNCs, he said adding that although India has also now liberalised its policies but now the MNCs, due to stern labour laws in the country, did not want to shift base from Pakistan.

With availability of good quality raw material at cheaper rates, football manufacturing units of Pakistan were only doing stitching work to complete the export orders from all over the world, he added.

"We are facing a threat from the China also, as it has already started manufacturing footballs with machine stitching. As production of Chinese units is in bulk, it costs less than the Indian units, which still believes in hand-stitching to provide better quality to the product," he claimed.