Thirty years on the Alappuzha backwaters
Angalamman Traders has been processing coconut husk since 1994. What began as a family ratt spinning rope for local fishermen is now a small yard supplying growers, workshops and households across India — still run by the same family, still in the same village.
Why we sell direct
Coir has always passed through many hands: the grower, the retting contractor, the defibring mill, the trader, the exporter. Each takes a margin, and by the time the fibre reaches a nursery in Pune or a workshop in Delhi, it costs three times what the grower was paid.
Selling online lets us cut that chain. You pay close to the mill rate, and the growers we buy from get a better price than the trader would offer. Nobody in between takes a cut for moving a bale from one warehouse to another.
Why coir matters
Roughly a third of a coconut’s weight is husk, and most of it is still burnt or dumped. Turning it into fibre and pith keeps that carbon out of the air, gives seasonal work to the villages around us, and produces a material that composts cleanly at the end of its life.
No plastic geotextile matches coir for erosion control on a slope that needs to be planted. No synthetic potting medium holds water the way washed pith does. It is an old material that is genuinely hard to improve on.
How coir is made
Six stages, most of which have not changed in a century.
- 01
Sourcing the husk
We buy mature coconut husk directly from growers around the Alappuzha backwaters at fair, published rates. Husk that would otherwise be burnt as waste becomes our raw material.
- 02
Retting
The husk soaks in fresh backwater for several weeks. Natural microbial action loosens the fibre from the pith without a single chemical softener.
- 03
Defibring and combing
Retted husk is beaten to separate fibre from pith, then machine combed to align the strands and screen out sand, dust and short fibre.
- 04
Grading and drying
Fibre is graded by length and sun-dried to a stable moisture content. Pith is washed and buffered until its electrical conductivity drops below 0.5 mS/cm.
- 05
Spinning and weaving
Long fibre is twisted into rope and twine on traditional ratts, or woven into mats. The rest is baled for sale by weight.
- 06
Weighing and packing
Every consignment is weighed on calibrated scales and packed into breathable bales that will not trap moisture on the road.
Come and see the range
Fibre and pith by the kilogram, rope, mats and twine by the piece. Samples available on request for anyone ordering in bulk.