India accounts for more than two-thirds of the world’s production of coir and coir products. Coir Industry is mostly concentrated in coconut producing countries like India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, etc. Kerala is the home of the Indian coir industry, particularly white fiber, accounting for 61 percent of coconut production and over 85 percent of coir products.
India has a long coastline dotted with coconut palms, the growth of coir industry in other coastal States has been insignificant. Not more than 28 percent of the coconut husks are utilized in the coir industry, the remaining being used as fuel or as waste material in rural areas. Productions in the cooperative fold and in the private sector are not encouraging too. The already undertaken development programs aimed at the revitalisation of coir cooperatives, the creation of entrepreneurship, quality improvement, and diversification product ranges.
Since the development of the coir sector contributes towards the sustainable development agenda in terms of the creation of environment-friendly products, its application for domestic use along with the usage in housing, building, agriculture, horticulture, and infrastructure production are significant. The world population is becoming more and more conscious about the need for preserving nature with an increasing number of people opting for environment-friendly products.
Coir Industry has developed on a large scale only in India and Sri Lanka. These two countries are the largest producers and exporters of coir. Owing to fundamental differences in economic conditions governing coconut cultivation and coir extraction and those necessary for coir production many of the large coconut producing countries viz. Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand have only relatively small coir output.
India is the major producer of coir among the coir producing countries in the world. Of the total world output, India's share is about 56%. About one - fifth of the total production of coir yarn goes for the manufacture of value-added products, namely, doormats, mattings, etc. While 60% of the production of finished products is exported, the domestic market consumes the balance.