Notebook-making reaches peak ahead of schools’ reopening

MADURAI: The making of notebooks, which are essential for all school students to help them properly execute classwork and keep track of homework, has reached its peak.

With just over a month’s time left for the reopening of schools, K Murugesan, secretary of the Madurai Notebook Manufacturers Association, said in some cases, the demand for student notebooks outstripped the supply of papers, the key raw material for the making.

The cost of papers rose by 25 per cent over last year and prices spiked even more by 47 per cent during the previous academic term. Hence, the cost of production increased by 20 to 25 per cent on the whole.

“A notebook with 192 pages costs Rs 24 at the wholesale market, but there’s a dip in production cost two years ago when one notebook was priced at Rs 14,” Murugesan told DT Next on Sunday. Despite rising production costs, the profit margin is a page thin of just three per cent.

The majority of the manufacturers largely rely on Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Limited (TNPL), Karur, where 3,600 tonnes of paper is produced on a daily average.

Apart from supplying the manufactured goods to various other states including Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and also making exports, the supply quota of papers from the TNPL is 40 per cent to paper dealers in Tamil Nadu this year. However, a common challenge faced is the shortage of labourers.

Though with the advent of technology, most of the manufacturing units got transformed into semi-mechanised, the industry is still labour oriented as the workforce is engaged in cutting paper reels, sewing and binding among others. “We could manage production involving about 20 per cent of migrant labourers among the entire workforce,” he said.

“In those days, hard-cover bound notebooks were made and it was a time-consuming job when six workers were involved in making around 2,000 such hard bound notebooks a day. But, now as many as 7,000 soft-bound flexible wrapper notebooks could be manufactured daily by machinery,” Murugesan said.

According to R Mahendran, a manufacturer from Sivakasi, Virudhunagar district, there’s a lack of skilled industrial labour and this industry could not rely much on migrant workers, who need training for at least six months and until then such workers could hardly be retained.

D Anandaraja, another manufacturer from Sivakasi, said last year a kilo of ‘eco map litho paper’ cost Rs 70 and now it has gone up to Rs100. The production cost has increased by 40 per cent this year. It became difficult to compete with new players in the industry.

However, it’s reduced the buying capacity to some extent as there’s a dip in the volume of orders. After two years of the COVID lockdown, some bulk orders were placed at a time for the urgent need of notebooks. Hence, the peak demand for this product could not be met in time, he said.