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A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE
Handmade paper and paper products combine aesthetics with functionality and also environmental friendliness. Exports form India have gone up in the fifty years that this industry has been around, but there is room for much more growth.
The handmade paper industry in India falls under the purview of the Khadi and Village Industries Corporation. Earlier known as the All India Khadi and Village Industries Board, the corporation was set up in 1953. The KVIC has been very supportive of the industry, exponentially increasing the number of manufacturing units since then. The production values also have gone up from the initial mere half a million rupees to more than 150 million rupees now. Exports now stand at around 500 million rupees.
In this era of ecological safety awareness, handmade paper, made from recyclable waste, presents a very acceptable option, both for use as well as for investment. Handmade products are cost-effective items to produce. They consume very little raw material, and what it uses is cellulose-rich waste material like cotton rags and waste paper. This means there is no depletion of natural resources. Also it does not need very high technology machinery for production; the production process itself is quite simple and environmentally safe as they do not cause much pollution. Plus it does not require any high degree of skill on the part of the workers. The production units are easy to set up even in rural areas, and can be done with comparatively low capital. What's more, it can produce certain specialised varieties of paper like watermark, filter paper, drawing sheets, etc., and at marginally higher cost than mill-made paper.
The advantages of handmade paper
Apart from all the merits listed above there are a few more areas where handmade paper scores high. A few of them are:
· Special paper like fancy and decorative base paper, personalized
stationery paper, deckle edge papers, ultra thin backing paper, permanent paper for
museums, archives, and libraries, durable paper, for certificates, legal documents, etc. are very uneconomical to produce in large paper mills. This segment can be very easily taken care by the handmade paper industry.
· Handmade paper production uses mild techniques of pulping and so the recyclability of the raw materials is double than in the case of conventional paper manufacture.
· As the fibres of handmade paper are shaken in four different directions, as compared to the side to side movement of the machine made paper, it displays better strength and is liable to tearing as they are less direction-oriented.
· Handmade paper is pre-shrunk as they are dried naturally.
· The mild processing technique also lends increased permanence to handmade paper.
The handmade papermaking units are scattered throughout the country with more
concentration in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Kerala. The capacity of the units, that are owned by registered institutions, cooperative societies, private entrepreneurs and individual artisans, range from 50 kgs to 700 kgs per day. The KVIC wants to multiply the production capacity to increase the share of the handmade paper to more than 1% of the total paper production in the country.
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