AHMEDABAD: Surging crude oil prices and disrupted supply chains amid the West Asia conflict force Surat’s textile mills to cut operations, triggering worker distress.
Notably, Morbi’s ceramic exports are severely hit amid port closures across the Gulf.
Surat’s textile hub is at the centre of the crisis, where rising input costs and broken supply chains are pushing mills toward partial shutdowns.
As global instability drives crude oil prices upward, the cost shock has cascaded directly into Surat’s textile sector, where every input from yarn to coal has turned sharply expensive, and as a result, the South Gujarat Textile Processors Association confirms that raw material supply chains have been severely disrupted, squeezing production viability.
The pressure is now translating into hard decisions.
Yarn prices climb relentlessly, and coal, critical for processing, becomes costlier and scarcer. Mill operators are staring at a shrinking buffer, with just 10 to 20 days of coal stock left.
If consumption continues at this pace, an energy crisis is no longer a warning but an imminent reality.
Faced with the dual squeeze of cost and supply, the industry has moved into survival mode, and in a significant escalation, textile processors have decided to halt operations for two days every week.
The move is aimed at cutting losses and conserving resources.
It signals deep distress in one of Gujarat’s most vital economic engines.
The scale of impact is massive as Surat houses nearly 400 to 500 textile mills, each linked to thousands of livelihoods, and as demand weakens simultaneously, the crisis is compounding further.
Jitu Vakharia, president of the South Gujarat Textile Prosser Association (SGPA), laid bare the grim ground reality, stating in detail, “Due to the increase in the price of grey cloth, market parties are currently not giving goods for processing to the mills. In such a situation, operating the mills is proving to be economically unviable and loss-making. We have been forced to decide to keep the mills closed for two days a week from next week.”
That decision, however, carries a human cost, as nearly 3 lakh workers are directly dependent on these mills, and as operations shrink, wages are taking a direct hit, triggering a fresh wave of labour uncertainty across the city.
The crisis is already visible on the ground, as declining work opportunities collide with a steady outflow of workers.
Thousands are now leaving Surat daily for their hometowns, raising fears that if the situation persists, the industry could soon face an acute labour shortage just when demand cycles return, potentially dealing a longer-term blow to Surat’s economic recovery.
Simultaneously, the shockwaves are spreading beyond textiles into Gujarat’s ceramic capital, Morbi, where the same geopolitical tensions are tightening their grip, and after earlier gas shortages had already forced over 450 ceramic units to shut, the ongoing conflict has now choked export routes.
With key Gulf ports in regions like Dubai, Oman, Sharjah, Qatar, and Kuwait facing disruptions, containers loaded with tiles from Morbi are now stranded mid-transit, effectively freezing cash flow and export momentum for the industry.
What is emerging, therefore, is not an isolated sectoral slowdown but a cascading industrial crisis across Gujarat, where global war tensions are colliding with local production realities.
Moreover, the State’s manufacturing backbone is being tested under unprecedented pressure.
