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India’s Apparel Exports Maintain Momentum Through 2024
Glenn Taylor
4 min read
As India’s air cargo volume is expected to quadruple over the next two decades—the largest projected growth of any worldwide market—a rebound of the country’s apparel exporters could further ignite this push.
According to estimates released by India’s ministry of commerce, readymade garment (RMG) exports for November increased 9.8 percent to $1.12 billion, signaling robust global demand for made-in-India products, the Apparel Exports Promotion Council (AEPC) said on Tuesday.
RMG exports in the eight-month period from April to November rose 11.4 percent from the year prior to $9.85 billion, ministry data says.
The November and eight-month figures are still down from 2022 totals at 6.6 percent and 4.9 percent, respectively, but the industry shares confidence in a long-term bounce back.
“India’s RMG sector is registering significant export growth signaling acceptability and rise in demand for made-in-India products globally,” said Shri Sudhir Sekhri, chairman of AEPC, in a statement. “While the overall exports declined, apparel exports withstood the headwinds showing the resilience to buck the adverse situation. I am hopeful that with the changing geopolitical equations a lot more business will shift to India in the near future.”
Those geopolitical equations could range from the expected addition of more tariffs on goods coming out of China, or the uncertainty of a new government in neighboring Bangladesh—where logistics had briefly been upended due to port closures.
India’s strength in apparel exports comes as shippers got good news out of India’s ports, which will continue to function as usual after averting a dockworker strike of 18,000 workers. That strike would have taken place Tuesday if the Indian Ports Association didn’t implement wage demands that were previously agreed upon by the union dockworkers.
And at privately owned parts that weren’t involved in those labor disputes, cargo movement keeps ramping up. On Monday, Mundra Port, the largest container seaport in India, handled a record 396 vessels in November.
According to the Tiruppur Exporters’ Association (TEA), a major Indian textile hub, Tiruppur, is benefiting from the rise in total demand.
Tiruppur, which contributes 55 percent of India’s total knitwear exports, posted a 13 percent increase in exports in the first five months of this financial year to August, the association said.
U.S. retailers like Walmart, Carter’s, J.C. Penney, Gap and Tommy Hilfiger, as well as U.K.-based apparel companies like Primark, Next and Marks & Spencer are among those ordering from manufacturers in the Tiruppur cluster, according to a report from Indian publication Business Standard.
Another media platform in the country covering SMBs, KNN India, said in a recent article that apparel export units are operating at near-maximum capacity and receiving a surge of orders from both the U.S. and the U.K.
The region’s 20,000 manufacturing units are currently running at 95 percent capacity, a significant improvement from just months ago when they were operating at 60 to 65 percent capacity. These units involve various processes across the textile value chain, providing employment to roughly 800,000 people across knitting, dyeing, bleaching, fabric printing, garment making, embroidering and more.
According to KM Subramanian, president of the TEA, the knitwear sector anticipates a 14 percent revenue increase in the 2025 fiscal year.
As exports from Tiruppur are expected to increase in the coming months, retailers are appointing third-party auditing firms to assess the capacity and capability of suppliers in Tiruppur to handle additional orders.
“Several top buyers from the U.S. and U.K. are appointing firms like SGS and Bureau Veritas for audit of export units in Tiruppur is the first step towards global brands placing more orders from us,” Subramanian told Indian publication the Deccan Herald. “While some firms are already delivering additional orders, we will definitely witness further boom in the sector.”
India’s status as an apparel exporter aligns well with the country’s massive projected growth of its air freight capabilities.
Although India represented less than 1 percent of global air cargo traffic in 2023, Boeing’s World Air Cargo Forecast projects India’s air cargo volume to quadruple over the next 20 years, with compound annual growth rate (CAGR) reaching 7 percent.
Inditex is one such retailer that has taken the air route out of India more often due to the shifting some cargo away from ocean freight that would have gone through the conflict-ridden Red Sea. If the Houthi attacks in the region continue, more apparel brands with India-sourced garments could make a similar sea-to-air shift.
The Zara parent sent 3,865 shipments by air from India in the 12 months through August, a 37 percent increase on the previous year, according to a Reuters analysis of shipment records from trade data provider ImportGenius.
