 "Ceramic")
In an attempt to salvage small manufacturers from influx of Chinese products in global market and to boost exports, the Morbi Ceramic Association (MCA), India's largest cluster for ceramics, will set up its own dedicated warehouses in 11 countries.
The association is going to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with various trade organisations and associations of USA, Latvia, Vietnam, Africa, Thailand and other countries for the warehouse project.
According to MCA, small players can park their ceramic products and supply it according to the demand. Under the MOU, local trade body in the respective country will help MCA to find viable location and set up warehouses. Morbi is home to about 650 ceramic units and it is world's third largest ceramic cluster after Italy and China.
"We are planning to setup warehouses in 11 countries to provide support to small manufacturers in export. This will help ceramic industry to fulfil their global demand quickly. To setup warehouses, MCA will sign MOUs with 11 countries' trade organizations in Vibrant Ceramic Trade and Summit at Ahmedabad in December," said K G Kundariya, president of MCA.
For trial, MCA will setup warehouse in Vietnam. The basic concept of the warehouse project is that the ceramic manufacturers will park their products like wall and floor tiles at the warehouse and supply the stock on demand. According to the project, each warehouse has the capacity to store 200 containers or over 5,000 tonnes ceramic products. Buyers directly get supply from these storages.
Kundariya said, "generally it takes a month time for the products to reach buyers. Our concept is to reduce this time so that buyers can easily get their order. This will also help ceramic industry of India to get more export orders globally and we can explore more markets for us."
There are about 650 ceramic units at Morbi and surrounding area which is engaged in floor tile, wall tile and sanitary items. The industry is providing direct employment to the over 400,000 people and indirect employment to 200,000 people. Turnover of Morbi is around Rs 27,000 crore. Since last two years, export is growing from Morbi. During 2015-16 the city had exported about Rs 4,200 crore worth of ceramic products and for 2016-17, the industry is expecting about 40-45% growth in exports.
"Globally, demand for Indian ceramic products is growing since the last couple of years as we have improved quality with higher adoption of technology. This has helped Morbi to increase exports. We are expecting over Rs 6,000 crore exports in current financial year," said Kundariya.
