Key facts
| Figure | What it measures |
|---|---|
| ~90% | of India’s cotton knitwear exports come from Tiruppur4 |
| ₹46,000 cr | knitwear exports in 2025-26, a record, to more than 50 countries4 |
| ~6 lakh | people employed by the textile sector in Tiruppur (2025)5 |
| ~20,000 | units in the cluster, from knitting and dyeing to labels and packing4 |
| 2,500 | garment exporters; 1,700 more stitch for the home market or on job work4 |
| ~100 | exporters ship about half of the town’s exports (2024)4 |
| ~30% | share of Tiruppur’s knitwear exports that went to the US (2025)6 |
| 8–15% | typical margin of a small exporter (2025)5 |
| ~1.5 lakh | workers short across the cluster (2025–26)6 |
| 360 / 18 | dyeing units, and the common effluent treatment plants most of them share4 |
| ~96% | of dye-house water recycled, according to the exporters’ association4 |
How it began
A domestic vest town
Tiruppur’s first knitting unit opened in 1925, in a cotton-growing belt with a ready supply of yarn from the Coimbatore mills. By 1961 the town had about 230 knitting units, almost all making white cotton vests (banians) for the Indian market. It exported nothing until the late 1970s.
From one importer to the world
In 1978 an Italian importer, Verona, came looking for white T-shirts, a product a vest unit could make with little change. The European retailer C&A followed in 1981. Exports were ₹18.69 crore in 1985, ₹289.85 crore in 1990 and ₹3,581 crore in 2000.
Two policy changes widened the door. The 1991 reforms opened Western markets and made machinery easier to import. When quotas on Indian garment exports ended in 2005, firms that had run 100 to 200 machines began installing about 1,000.
The water ruling
Growth came with a cost to the Noyyal river and the farms downstream. After the Supreme Court took up the pollution in 1996, the Madras High Court on 28 January 2011 ordered more than 700 bleaching and dyeing units to close until they stopped releasing any waste water at all.
The units that reopened did so with zero liquid discharge: their own treatment plants, or shared common plants. That requirement still shapes who can dye in Tiruppur and what each kilo of dyed fabric costs.
How the business works here
An export order in Tiruppur is rarely made under one roof. The cluster has about 2,500 knitting units that knit fabric for anyone, 810 wet-processing units (360 dyeing, 50 bleaching, 400 printing), 4,200 garment units, 1,390 finishing units for embroidery and compacting, and about 11,100 units making labels, trims and packing. An exporter takes the order and the risk; much of the knitting, dyeing, printing and finishing is bought in as job work, paid per kilo or per piece.4
This is why a small firm can take a large order: it rents the capacity of a hundred neighbours instead of owning it. The same structure spreads fixed cost thinly across the town, and lets a unit grow or shrink with its order book. The exporters’ association had 1,316 members in 2024, nine in ten of them MSMEs, while about 100 firms shipped half the exports.4
Water decides who may dye. After the 2011 court order, of the 360 dyeing units about 60 run their own treatment plants and the rest share 18 common plants, with about 96% of the water recycled. Every dyeing job in the town carries that treatment cost.4
Under pressure now
Tariffs. The US put a 50% duty on Indian garments from 27 August 2025. By October, goods worth ₹1,500–2,000 crore were stuck and buyers wanted 20–25% off. The rate fell to 18% under an interim deal in February 2026, but a further 10% Section 301 duty applied to non-exempt Indian goods from 24 July 2026. The cluster still reported record exports of about ₹46,000 crore for 2025-26; the strain fell on units dependent on one US buyer.4
People. The exporters’ association estimates a shortage of about 1.5 lakh workers, and about two lakh of the workforce come from other states. Odisha, once a large source of workers, is building its own garment industry. Tamil Nadu has set aside ₹1,250 crore over five years for hostels for women workers.4
Fibre. Man-made fibre was only about 10% of turnover in 2025, while world demand has shifted towards polyester and blends. The industry has set itself a 50:50 cotton–synthetic target.4
A costing note
For a knitwear exporter the cost sheet is mostly bought-in: yarn, then knitting, dyeing, printing and stitching charges paid to job workers, then trims, packing and freight. Because most of these are variable, the real test is the margin on each style, not the factory’s overheads. A margin of 8–15% leaves little room: a 5% discount on an 8% margin gives away more than half of the order’s profit.
Three numbers are worth tracking every month: the yarn price against the price quoted in open orders, the losses in dyeing and cutting (process loss) against the norm, and how long money sits in stock and with buyers, since an export order takes 45 to 90 days to execute. Job-work charges paid to other units also carry GST rules of their own, which is where many small exporters lose credit.