International Journal of Horticulture 2015, Vol.5, No.11, 1
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11
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Research Article Open Access
Performance of Match Splints Industry – a Gateway to Agripreneurship
Development
Sekhar C.
1
, Kumaran K.
2
, Sekar I.
3
1. Professor and Head, Department of Social Sciences, Horticultural College and Research Institute, Periyakulam, India – 625 604
2. Professor and Head, Department of Tree Breeding, Forest College and Research Institute, Mettupalayam, India – 641 301
3. Professor in Forestry, Department of Floriculture and Medicinal Crops, Horticultural College and Research Institute, Periyakulam, India – 625 604
Corresponding author email
International Journal of Horticulture, 2015, Vol.5, No.11 doi: 10.5376/ijh.2015.05.0011
Received: 24 May, 2015
Accepted: 10 Jun., 2015
Published: 12 Aug., 2015
Copyright
© 2015 Sekhar et al., This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article
:
Sekhar Dr. C., Kumaran Dr. K.. and Sekar Dr. I., 2015, Performance 0f Match Splints Industry – a Gateway To Agripreneurship Development, International
Journal of Horticulture, 2015, Vol.5, No.11 1-11 (doi
Abstract
The Farm Graduates of State Agricultural Universities of India are mostly risk averters. It is mainly due to the lack of
confidence and lack of money for investment into the agribusiness enterprises. Besides, they are also lacking awareness on how to
establish the agribusiness institutions so as to gain higher profit. In this circumstance, most of the farm graduates are hailing in the
subordinate services and becomes satisfied with what is available as income in a month. Very few are risk takers and got involved in
establishing such wonderful agribusiness ventures and find the ways and means of earning profit by eliminating the stiff competition
in the global environment. This article aims to infuse the confidence building exercise to the farm and other graduates who are
partially having an idea of establishing the business ventures. The success story of Match Splints Industry located in Western Part of
Tamil Nadu and its performance is highlighted in this article for the emerging entrepreneurs in agribusiness enterprises for infusing
confidence. The profits generated out of this enterprise will definitely be a motivation to the young Agripreneurs.
Keywords
Match Splints Industry; Agripreneurship Development; Performance of Industry; Agribusiness Development
1 Introduction
Bengal is the birth place of Match Industry in India.
The first match wood industry was established in West
Bengal in 1920s and Second in Tamil Nadu during
1923 at Sivakasi producing Lucifer matches. The
small scale handmade match industries in Sivakasi,
Kovilpatti, Sattur, Kalugumalai, Elayirampannai and
Sankarankoil towns of Tamil Nadu state show a highly
organized network (Saresh et.al. 2011). Wooden match
production in India is split into three sectoral
categories; the mechanized large scale sector; the
handmade small scale sector; and the cottage sector.
Around 82 per cent of the total match production is in
the hand made, small scale accounted for 67 per cent
and the cottage sector accounted to be only 15 per cent
where technology has remained relatively simple.
These two non mechanized sectors of the match
industry are distinguished primarily by output size.
The industry as a whole directly employs an estimated
2.50 lakh people with only 6000 of these in the
mechanized sector. The cottage sector which involves
totally manual operations and produces less than 75
million match sticks per year and is often household
based, accounts for about 50000 workers. Thus, small
scale, factory based match production units employ by
far the largest number of people involved in the match
sector (Tandon, 1990) especially the women folk share
74 per cent of the total workforce employed in match
production in the state of Tamil Nadu (Daljeet Singh,
2014).
On an average, the requirement of wooden match
splints is 1.6 crore kg or 16000 tonnes in a month.
To meet this demand, the soft wood trees are also
imported from China. It will take 15 to 20 days for the
shipment to reach the Thoothukkudi port. During
transit, the wooden logs get discolored and thus
wooden splints extracted from them will become unfit
for use, The cost of imported wooden splint is Rs. 46
per kg whereas in the local market it is available for
even Rs 30 per kg (The Hindu 2015). Moreover, there
is no possibility of getting them imported on a
continuous basis. To meet the raw material demand,
re-plantation of soft wood trees in the farm lands are
planned by the producing firms.
The major raw materials used in the production of
safety matches are soft woods used to make the match
sticks which is also known as “Splints” and boxes and
