Sports Goods

Current Status : There are more than 3500 units, employing nearly 50-70 thousand workers and producing goods worth Rs. 200 crores annually. The major products are items related to cricket, boxing gloves, football, badminton, and lawn tennis. The cluster comprises both SMEs and household units. The SMEs are largely located in the sports goods complex, while the sub-contracting units are spread all over the city and even in the nearby villages. The cluster is growing at an average annual growth rate of 8 per cent for the last few years. Some units like those producing boxing gloves have been growing at a comparatively faster rate. With new technology and a competitive stimulus could push the growth to nearly 20 per cent annually.Meerut sports goods industry contributes to roughly around 25 per cent of India's sports goods export.

Support Required: The cluster draws technical support from the Process and Product Development Centre (PPDC) for sports goods, which is a central government organization. The cluster firms mostly use manual manufacturing processes. The cluster produces items only for few sports, leaving a large chunk of the segment out of its domain. Sector is MSME dominated and that constraint in getting large orders. The cluster is facing immense competition from mechanized units manufacturing similar products. The technology is changing rapidly and the cluster firms are too small to make the required investments. The cluster has immense scope for technical up gradation within the existing set of manufactured items. Even greater scope lies in diversifying to other sports good segments. Facilitation in acquiring technology, inter firm collaboration in getting orders of large scale, product standardization and easy finance together with an improved infrastructure is critical.