By IANS
Chennai : A footwear design and component testing lab is to come up soon at the Footwear Component Park near Chennai to benefit small manufacturers who now send their products to Singapore for testing.
The Consortium of Shoe Manufacturers promotes the 28-acre park at Irrungattukotai that has 21 industrial plots.
“Eighteen plots have been allotted to as many manufacturers. There are three foreign direct investments, two from Italy and one from Brazil,” K. Elangovan, executive director of Council of Leather Exports (CLE), told IANS.
He said CLE was developing the footwear design studio and the component test lab so that small shoe manufacturers benefited.
“Currently, manufacturers are sending their footwear components to Singapore for testing and certification. The small and medium sized units find this very expensive,” he said.
According to Elangovan, the Footwear Design and Development Institute (FDDI) at Noida near New Delhi and the Central Leather Research Institute at Chennai were in the race for running the design studio.
FDDI was likely to bag the mandate as discussions on revenue sharing with CLE are on, he said. “We want a share in the total revenue and not in the profits of the design studio and the test lab.”