Tiruppur Exporters’ Association popularly known as TEA was set up in the year 1990 in Tirupur and Dr. A.Sakthivel was the President of the association from inception to September 2016. TEA has always been very quick in taking up the issues and stand in forefront to get them addressed. TEA is representing as on March 2021, TEA is consisting of 1135 knitwear exporters as members.

 

 When TEA was formed in 1990, Tirupur exports was Rs.290 Crores and Dr. Sakthivel had a vision and set a target of Rs.1,000 crores exports from Tirupur in next five years and Tirupur knitwear sector fulfilled his vision, and achieved it in 1993 itself. The exports was always marching ahead despite a lot of hurdles and from a meager Rs.10 crores in 1985, it reached Rs.5000 crores in 2003, and Rs.23,000 Crores in 2015-16 is a performance that has no parallel anywhere in the world.

 

 Shri. Raja M Shanmugham of M/s. Warsaw International was elected as a President of TEA for the Period 2016-2019 and again got reelected for the period 2019-2022. He is currently chief mentor of NIFT TEA Knitwear Fashion Institute, Tirupur. He keeps a long term vision for Tirupur and was a guiding force to prepare the vision document 2020, with an intension for Tirupur Business clocking Rs. 1,00,000 Crores in the year 2020 and due to macro economic changes the target has been now revised to 2022. In 2019-20, the sales turnover of Tirupur knitwear business was Rs. 42,750 Crores, out of this, the contribution of exports and domestic business was Rs. 24,750 Crores and Rs. 18,000 Crores respectively.