HISTORY OF JUTE
By Admin / 22 Sep, 2022JUTE PRODUCING COUNTRIES
The top Jute Producers are: Bangladesh, India, Brazil, Vietnam, and Thailand.
Introduction
Jute is a natural fibre with golden and silky shine and hence called The Golden Fibre. It is the cheapest vegetable fibre procured from the bast or skin of the plant’s stem and the second most important vegetable fibre after cotton, in terms of usage, global consumption, production, and availability. It has high tensile strength, low extensibility, and ensures better breath ability of fabrics.
Jute fibre is 100% bio-degradable and recyclable and thus environmentally friendly. It is one of the most versatile natural fibres that has been used in raw materials for packaging, textiles, non-textile, construction, and agricultural sectors. It helps to make best quality industrial yarn, fabric, net and sacks.
Jute, the golden fibre, is the raw material for one of Bangladesh’s oldest industries. The first jute mill started production in Bangladesh in 1850. After more than 150 years, the jute industry is now challenged by competition from alternative materials, by the recession in the international markets and by low awareness among consumers of the versatile, eco-friendly nature of jute fabric itself. Yet this industry still provides a livelihood to more than 250,000 mill workers and more than 4 million farmers’ families. It is a golden bond with the Earth, Its use is a statement about ecological awareness as it is a fully bio-degradable and eco-friendly fiber. It comes from the earth, it helps the earth and once its life is done it merges back into the earth.
The advantages of jute include good insulating and antistatic properties, as well as having low thermal conductivity and moderate moisture regain. It includes acoustic insulating properties and manufactures with no skin irritations. Jute has the ability to be blended with other fibers, both synthetic and natural, and accepts cellulosic dye classes such as natural, basic, vat, sulfur, reactive, and pigment dyes. While jute is being replaced by relatively cheap synthetic materials in many uses, but jute’s biodegradable nature is suitable for the storage of food materials, where synthetics would be unsuitable.
Period from 17th century
The British East India Company was the British Empire Authority delegated in India from the 17th century to the middle of the 20th century. The company was the first Jute trader. The company traded mainly in raw jute during the 19th century. During the start of the 20th century, the company started trading raw jute with Dundee’s Jute Industry. This company had monopolistic access to this trade during that time. Margaret Donnelly, I was a jute mill landowner in Dundee in the 1800s. She set up the first jute mills in India. The Entrepreneurs of the Dundee Jute Industry in Scotland were called The Jute Barons.
In 1793, the East India Company exported the first consignment of jute. This first shipment, 100 tons, was followed by additional shipments at irregular intervals. Eventually, a consignment found its way to Dundee, Scotland where the flax spinners were anxious to learn whether jute could be processed mechanically.
Starting in the 1830’s, the Dundee spinners learned how to spin jute yarn by modifying their power-driven flax machinery. The rise of the jute industry in Dundee saw a corresponding increase in the production and export of raw jute from the Indian sub-continent which was the sole supplier of this primary commodity.
Period from 1855
Calcutta (now Kolkata) had the raw material close by as the jute growing areas were mainly in Bengal. There was an abundant supply of labor, ample coal for power, and the city was ideally situated for shipping to world markets. The first jute mill was established at Rishra, on the River Hooghly near Calcutta in 1855 when Mr. George Acland brought jute spinning machinery from Dundee. Four years later, the first power driven weaving factory was set up.
By 1869, five mills were operating with 950 looms. Growth was rapid and, by 1910, 38 companies operating 30,685 looms exported more than a billion yards of cloth and over 450 million bags. Until the middle 1880’s, the jute industry was confined almost entirely to Dundee and Calcutta. France, America, and later Germany, Belgium, Italy, Austria, and Russia, among others, turned to jute manufacturing in the latter part of the 19th century.
In the following three decades, the jute industry in India enjoyed even more remarkable expansion, rising to commanding leadership by 1939 with a total of 68,377 looms, concentrated mainly on the River Hooghly near Calcutta. These mills alone have proved able to supply the world demand.
The earliest goods woven of jute in Dundee were coarse bagging materials. With longer experience, however, finer fabrics called burlap, or hessian as it is known in India, were produced. This superior cloth met a ready sale and, eventually, the Indian Jute Mills began to turn out these fabrics. The natural advantage these mills enjoyed soon gave Calcutta world leadership in burlap and bagging materials and the mills in Dundee and other countries turned to specialties, a great variety of which were developed.
Jute trade
Jute trade is currently centered around the Indian subcontinent. Bangladesh is the largest exporter of raw & producer jute goods, and India is the largest consumer of jute products in the world. The local price of Jute Goods in Indian subcontinent is the international price. Nearly 75% of Jute goods are used as packaging materials, burlap (Hessian), and sacks. Carpet Backing Cloth, the third major Jute outlet, is fast growing in importance. Currently, it consists of roughly 15% of the world’s Jute goods consumption. The remaining products are carpet yarn, cordage, felts, padding, twine, ropes, decorative fabrics, and miscellaneous items for industrial use.
Role of Jute sector in Bangladesh:
The contribution of jute sector to economy of Bangladesh is enormous. This sector has been generating employment to a large segment of total population of the country, directly and indirectly over the years. Bangladesh produces 5.5-6.0 million (55-60 lakh) bales of raw jute every year of which some 3.2 million (32 lakh) bales are used in the existing 148 jute mills. The country exports 2.4 million (24 lakh) bales of jute.
Some 1,60,000 employees of the country are directly employed in the jute mills. The total demand for jute goods in the international market is 0.75 million (7.50 lakh) tonnes. Bangladesh exports 0.46 million (4.60 lakh) tonnes of jute goods while India enjoys a share of 0.285 million (2.85 lakh) tonnes in the international market.
Dhaka controls 62 per cent share of the total jute goods market of the world and earn Taka 20.125 billion (2012.5 crore) by exporting jute goods. Bangladesh is the lone exporter of raw jute. In recent year the country exported 2.4 million (24 lakh) bales of raw jute valued at Taka 9.77 million (977 crore). In total Bangladesh fetched Taka 29.395 billion (2939.5 crore) by exporting raw jute and jute goods. (Yusuf, 2007) As jute industry is economically an important industry of Bangladesh, any problem this industry faces should be studied carefully and should be removed as early as possible.
At present, the industry faces some serious problem both in public and in private sector. Some of these problems are; ever-increasing need of subsidies and rise in cost of production, share increased in idle looms, managerial vacuum, lack of effective operating policies, alleged gross mismanagement in procurement of raw jute, shortage of varied nature of orders received from the buyer, imbalance, obsolete and worn out equipment’s and some other problems like these. All these problems have converted this industry into a heavily loosing industry and hence needed generous subsidies from government.
But it is being observed that recently different organizations organizing seminars, symposium etc. and publishing various articles in newspaper regarding present ailing situation on jute industries. All are concerned how to overcome this situation and salvage the jute industry (Yusuf, 2007). So the authors of this paper make a study on the jute industry of Bangladesh.