After 42 years, the salt market here has plunged to a new low with the industry recording it’s worst ever performance as the 2017 season ends. Thoothukudi, the largest producer of salt in Tamil Nadu, which stands next to Gujarat and Rajasthan, has been gradually losing its sheen, according to G. Gragadurai, president, Thoothukudi Small Scale Salt Manufacturers’ Association. Production has slumped by about 20% this year.
“The slump has hit small scale manufacturing units,” he told The Hindu here on Thursday.
The market price was well below the cost of production and at least 15 small manufacturers, who were unable to withstand the crisis, have shut shop.
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The cost of production amounted to ₹600 per tonne for those having production on their own lands and ₹750 for the same quantity on leased lands. But the market price has dipped to ₹500 a tonne now.
“Ahead of Deepavali, many of them, who were unable to offer bonus to workers, had to borrow from moneylenders,” he said.
It was in 1975 that the market had slumped to such a dismal level, recalled A. R. A. S. Dhanabalan, secretary of the association. As the domestic market was not up to the mark, the manufacturers had been pinning hopes on export trade.
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Sharing his 35-year experience, S. Petchimuthu, a Thoothukudi-based producer, said normally when production was down, the market price of salt would increase. But, unusually, this year both production and market had suffered a blow, he said.
Sources in the salt industry said the business was up during the corresponding period last year when a tonne of salt was marketed even beyond ₹1,000.