Tamil Nadu Cooperative Silk Producers’ Federation (TANSILK) is the State level apex cooperative body, functioning under the control of the Department of Sericulture, Government of Tamil Nadu. It was registered as a cooperative society in the year 1978 under the Tamil Nadu Cooperative Societies Act 1983, with its own by-laws. The Director of Sericulture is the functional Registrar of this Cooperative organization.
TANSILK is having Silk Weavers Cooperative Societies, Silk Reelers and Twisters Industrial Cooperative Societies and Sarvodhaya Sanghs as its primary members and private silk reelers and silk twisters as its associate members.
TANSILK is governed by the executive body, which is elected through cooperative society’s election among its primary members. At present there are 27 Board of Directors including 6 nominated members. The day to day affairs of the society, is administrated by the Joint Director of Sericulture/Managing Director, appointed by the Government.
TANSILK has 6 branches functioning at Kancheepuram, Arni, Kumbakonam, Salem, Coimbatore, and Erode. Inspectors of Sericulture from the Department of Sericulture and federation staff are posted as Branch Managers for the management of branches. Raw and ready silk are sold through these branches.
The objective of this federation is to support the development of sericulture activities in the state of Tamil Nadu by supplying good quality and sufficient quantity silk at reasonable price to the Silk Handloom Weavers Cooperative Societies, Khadi and Village Industries Board, Sarvodaya Sanghs and individual weavers. By way of its transaction of raw and ready silk, TANSILK protects the interests of the sericulture farmers, silk reelers, silk twisters and silk weavers. All the raw and ready silks purchased by the TANSILK are subjected to quality test. Testing is done by the Regional Silk Technological Research Station of Central Silk Board functioning at Kancheepuram.
To continuously protect the interest of the sericulture stakeholders, an exclusive e-commerce portal has been developed to sell raw and ready silk to non-members of TANSILK, i.e., private silk twisters and master silk weavers who have not registered as members of TANSILK in view of expanding the silk trade.