Jute trade

The jute trade is centered mainly around India's West Bengal and Assam, and Bangladesh. The major producing country of jute is India^[1] and biggest exporter is Bangladesh, due to their natural fertile soil^{[citation needed]}. Production of jute by India and Bangladesh are respectively 1.968 million ton and 1.349 million metric ton.^[2] Bengal jute was exported to South East Asia from the 17th century by the Dutch, French and later by other Europeans.

By the 1790s a small export had developed to the Scottish city of Dundee, where the flax spinning industry could use a small percentage of jute to lower costs. Thomas Neigh, a Dundee merchant invented the mechanical process of spinning jute in 1833 by first soaking it in whale oil.^[3] British merchants exported raw jute from Bengal in increasing quantities from the 1840s to replace flax in the Dundee mills. Dundee, employing more than half the population in the mills, became the global centre of the industry, and earned the nickname "Juteopolis."^[4] In 1858, Indian financiers supported the importation of spinning machinery from Dundee in order to create their own industry, and by 1895, jute industries in Bengal overtook the Scottish jute trade. Many Scots worked in Bengal to set up jute factories for Indians, dominated by Marwari brokers such as G. D. Birla.

Today, nearly 75% of jute goods are packaging materials, such as burlap sacks. Problems such as obsolete machinery, strikes and lock-outs, and a lack of innovation have seen the Indian industry stagnate since independence.^[5] Jute coffee bags are perhaps the most famous product, known as hessian or burlap. These sacks found a military use starting in the Crimean War, and then in World War I the British War Office awarded their entire 1916 contract for sandbags to a Greek-Indian firm in Calcutta.^[6] It has been used in the fishing, construction, art and in the arms industry. India has the bulk of the jute industry (60%), but the raw jute comes mainly from Bangladesh which is the second-largest producer of jute products.

Carpet backing cloth (CBC), the third major jute outlet, is quickly growing in prominence. Currently it accounts for roughly 15% of the world's jute consumption globally.^{[citation needed]} Other common jute products behind CBC are carpet yarn, cordage, padding, felts, decorative fabrics, and miscellaneous heavy-duty items for industrial use.

As more countries make efforts to reduce or ban plastic usage for consumer bagging, jute bags take a greater share of the market.^[7] India produces 60% of global jute products; however, problems such as lack of investment, water shortage, poor quality seeds, and loss of crop land to urbanisation slow its growth as a biodegradable substitute for materials such as plastic which contribute to pollution.^[8]