Samalkha Industrial Association - Chaff Cutter Panipat, Haryana

Samalkha is a small town in the district of Panipat (Haryana).The town is well known for its foundry Cluster in the region. The cluster was developed in late 40s and early 50s. In 1949 a family of local traders brought this business to this town. They migrated trained workers to transfer their technical knowhow from Goraya (Punjab). This still continues to be the benchmark cluster for Samalkha. In the due course of time the number of units started growing along with the growth and bifurcation of this family. The story of the development of small units belongs to two brothers and their spouses who were working as in charge in foundries else where. In 1968 they came back to their town and started a small casting unit with a crucible. They slowly grew to five small units with small size cupolas. They introduced green sand casting with small size handy cupola .These cupolas can be charged almost every day with a capacity of .5 to 3 M.T. They started addressing the demand which was unattended by the big units i.e. the casting of machinery parts, motor casings, pumps parts etc. Slowly they grew as units which can address the immediate needs with quality product. Over a period of 60 years the cluster has witnessed many ups and downs. Starting with the production of chaff-cutting machine, Toka Machine, Haryana Toka Machine the cluster has introduced many products in its basket such as cane crushers, valve for pumps and pulleys for electric motors. To its parallel the small units which started with brass and gunmetal parts for cane crushers and chef cutters started running cupolas of small sizes and introduced new products in the cluster such as hand pump fittings, submersible pump bodies and electric motor casings etc. In 1991 started the new era of globalization and change in the policy of the central government to decontrol the supply of raw materials such as pig iron, steel and coke. Many units who were surviving on permits and quotas of raw materials vanished from the scene and number of units in the cluster reduced drastically in nineties. Geographical location Samalkha is situated on the national highway number one and is just 75 K.M away from the national capital Delhi in its north. The town is very well connected with the rail and road network. On the eastern part it is connected with UP which is just 25 K.M away across the famous river Yamuna. On its other sides it is connected with the other districts in Haryana like Sonepat, Rohtak, Jind and Karnal . The town is the central point of around 60 surrounding villages and is a big marketing center for them. It has a very big grain market with all the modern facilities as well as the largest mandi for jiggery. The jiggery is produced in bulk in this region as well as in the adjoining areas of western UP. The above table shows that the output of the cluster has grown at about 8 to 10% per annum and its turnover has almost more than doubled in last four years. According to an estimate average production capacity of the big units is 250 M.T per month and these units are actually operating at 50% of their installed capacity only