Yamunanagar : Pilgrims from distant places visit Kapalmochan fair at Yamunanagar every year to have a holy dip in ‘Sarovar’ and according to a tradition use it to buy new utensils before leaving the festival. As such Jagadhari Metal Industry enjoyed bumper sale of utensils manufactured by them on Monday like past years and did business worth between rupees eight and nine crore. The town was full of display stalls installed in the area including at the place of fair. According to information, viisitors from different states including Punjab, Himachal, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Delhi and within the state was an attraction this year.
Utensil manufacturers in Jagadhri: a metal town in Haryana that is well-known for its stainless steel, aluminium, brass and copper products not only in India but all over world well-known for its stainless steel, aluminium, brass and copper products. The industry, a majority of them in micro, small and medium category, is not only facing stiff competition from units located in other states but inverted duty structure post GST implementation has reduced their margins. Veterans of the industry said a few decades ago Jagadhri was the sole hub for utensil manufacturing. Its production was enough to meet 70-75% of domestic market demand. With other utensils hubs such as Jodhpur, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Maharashtra and Orissa having come up with their respective state government’s support over the years, Jagadhri metal industris’s share has come down drastically.
The manufacturers said that many manufacturing units have been closed in the past few years because of lack of support from the government. Information revealed that currently, the city comprises around 1,000 units engaged in stainless steel, aluminium, brass and copper utensils manufacturing in the micro, small and medium enterprises category. Most of the manufacturers said as there is no hand-holding from the state government like other states our share has come down drastically in past few years and now it is less than 15%, one of office bearer of an association APS Bhatti said. as the industry has a limited market access, it’s not expanding and the capital investment in this sector is almost stagnant here for many years as the market is not growing in accordance with manufacturing capabilities.
Tarun Goel, a former president of All India Aluminium Utensils Manufacturing Association said. logistics cost makes them unviable to market their products in other parts of the country as such over the years, new units have been set up across the country giving stiff competition to Jagadhari utensil manufacturers restricted to North India only, especially in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh because the logistics costs make our products costlier than the products manufactured locally there and as a result they have a limited market access.
