The Southern India Mills’ Association (SIMA) will be focusing on four major issues in the next two years – improving the cost competitiveness of the industry and getting the Centre to make raw material available at international prices, especially synthetic fibre, address market access problems, and promote value addition, the newly elected chairman of SIMA, M. Senthilkumar said.

SIMA will promote two textile processing parks in the State that will increase the textile processing capacity in Tamil Nadu by 350 tonnes to 400 tonnes a day.

The park coming up at Cuddalore is expected to be commissioned by 2017 and will have 10 units that will process yarn and fabric for captive use. The capacity of the park will be 250 tonnes a day.

The other park at Ramanathapuram will come up on nearly 200 acres and will have minimum 20 units, including small and medium scale industries. The total investment in the park will be nearly Rs. 500 crore.

Today, SIMA is the single largest employers’ organisation representing the organised textile industry in the world and the only employers’ organisation of the textile industry having in-house expertise to advice right from designing the textile project to marketing.