Sivakasi Fireworks Industry by the Numbers
Turnover, employment, exports and output of India's fireworks capital — the scattered Sivakasi industry figures consolidated into one maintained timeline.
Sivakasi fireworks industry statistics are scattered across a decade of news reports, trade-association quotes, and government orders, with no single maintained source. This page pulls the verifiable figures (turnover, employment, national output share, factory counts, exports, and the green-cracker transition) into one table, sourced line by line, and updated every year.
Last verified: 2026. This page is refreshed annually as new Diwali-season and government figures are published.
The short answer:
- The industry's most-cited annual turnover has moved from roughly ₹6,000 crore (the figure repeated since 2022) to about ₹7,000 crore in both the 2024 and 2025 Diwali seasons, per separate trade-body estimates.
- It employs an estimated 8 lakh people, directly and indirectly, across Sivakasi and the surrounding Virudhunagar district.
- Sivakasi accounts for roughly 90% of India's firecracker production, a figure that has held steady for years across independent sources.
- Around 1,000 to 1,150 licensed units operate in and around the town, depending on the season and source.
- India's official fireworks exports are tiny: under $1 million a year by customs data, despite the domestic scale. Tamil Nadu announced a new export push in June 2026.
- Trade bodies claim roughly 80% of Sivakasi's output now carries the green-cracker tag, though that is an industry self-report, not an independent audit.
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For the origin story behind these numbers, see why Sivakasi is famous for crackers and the history of Sivakasi fireworks. More original data lives in our crackers data & research hub.
Annual turnover
No government body publishes an audited, consolidated revenue figure for the Sivakasi fireworks cluster: every number below is a trade-association estimate, not a filed accounts total, so treat the trend rather than any single year as the reliable part.
₹6,000 crore is the figure that has anchored industry reporting since at least October 2022, when Business Standard described Sivakasi's fireworks industry as a "₹6,000 crore" sector turning toward green crackers and an international market. The same ₹6,000 crore figure was still being used as the baseline turnover as recently as June 2026, in coverage of Tamil Nadu's new export policy.
That baseline has since been overtaken at Diwali. The Fireworks Traders Federation put combined sales for the 2024 Deepavali season at more than ₹7,000 crore, a jump of roughly ₹1,000 crore over the prior year. A year later, TANFAMA (Tamil Nadu Fireworks and Amorces Manufacturers' Association) reported the 2025 Deepavali season also closed at around ₹7,000 crore, which it described as roughly 17% higher than the previous season (a different comparison base than the traders' federation figure), which is why the two accounts don't reconcile to the decimal. Both, however, point the same direction: Sivakasi's peak-season sales have climbed from the long-standing ₹6,000 crore mark into the ₹7,000 crore range over 2024–2025.
Employment
The industry is the largest employer in the arid Virudhunagar district, and most sources converge on roughly 8 lakh (800,000) people employed directly and indirectly. One commonly cited breakdown, reported by Business Standard, splits this into about 3 lakh direct workers inside the factories and a further 4 lakh in allied and indirect roles: packaging, transport, raw-material supply, and retail.
Reporting on the 2025 Deepavali season put direct and indirect employment at an estimated 8 lakh across roughly 1,108 factories, and noted that around 60% of that workforce is women, consistent with earlier labour surveys that found women make up the majority of hands-on production roles in Sivakasi's units.
Number of factories and units
Counts of licensed units vary by source and by year, because licensing cycles, safety-driven closures, and informal subcontracting all move the number:
- "Over 1,000" units
- engaged in fireworks production in and around Sivakasi is the figure used in current-affairs summaries of the industry.
- Around 1,070 medium and small-scale units
- was the figure cited when TANFAMA argued, in 2022, that a National Green Tribunal order would affect more than 1,000 manufacturers.
- Approximately 1,108 factories
- in Sivakasi and neighbouring areas was the count reported alongside the 2025 Deepavali sales figures.
Read together, the honest range for recent years is roughly 1,000 to 1,150 registered units, not a fixed count. Expect the number to move slightly every season as licences are renewed, denied, or surrendered after safety inspections.
Exports
This is the industry's weakest number relative to its size, and it is worth stating plainly: India's official fireworks exports are minimal. Customs data compiled from UN Comtrade under HS code 3604 (fireworks and pyrotechnic articles) shows India's total export value at $645,145 in 2023, down roughly 74% from $2.5 million in 2022, and far below the multi-hundred-crore domestic sales figures above. For an industry that makes 90% of the country's fireworks, that is a strikingly small share sold abroad. Most of Sivakasi's output stays inside India, going to states without local production, not overseas.
That gap is now a stated policy target. In June 2026, Tamil Nadu's minister for industries, S. Keerthana, announced that the state is preparing a dedicated policy to help Sivakasi manufacturers export directly and compete with Chinese fireworks producers internationally, including logistics upgrades at Chennai and Thoothukudi ports and support for small and micro-scale units to enter export markets for the first time. As of this page's last verification, that policy had been announced but not yet published in final form, so no export target figures exist to cite yet.
The green-cracker transition
A 23 October 2018 Supreme Court judgement (Writ Petition (Civil) No. 728 of 2015) started the shift: it barred barium-based crackers and permitted only CSIR-NEERI-certified "green" formulations for sale, followed by National Green Tribunal orders in November–December 2020 restricting non-green crackers in cities with moderate-or-worse air quality. (Our green crackers safety guide covers the certification standard itself.)
TANFAMA has reported that more than 380 of its affiliated factories have formally tied up with CSIR-NEERI to manufacture certified low-emission formulations, and TANFAMA's president has stated that close to 80% of the products now leaving Sivakasi carry the green-cracker tag, with the newer formulations cutting particulate emissions by roughly 30–35% against conventional equivalents, in line with CSIR-NEERI's certified minimum. That 80% figure is an industry association's own estimate of its members' output mix, not an independently audited certification rate, so buyers who want a guarantee on any individual product should still check the CSIR-NEERI logo and QR code rather than rely on the industry-wide average. See our guide to checking a genuine green cracker.
One widely circulated figure (that fewer than 35% of licensed manufacturers have adopted green formulations) appears in secondary current-affairs summaries without a traceable primary source or date, so it is left out of the table below; it cannot be independently verified against a dated NEERI or PESO release.
The numbers at a glance
| Metric | Value | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual turnover (baseline) | ~₹6,000 crore | 2022–2026 | Business Standard, Oct 2022 |
| Deepavali season sales | >₹7,000 crore | 2024 | Fireworks Traders Federation (via ap7am.com) |
| Deepavali season sales | ~₹7,000 crore (~17% YoY) | 2025 | TANFAMA / News9live, 14 Oct 2025 |
| Employment (direct + indirect) | ~8 lakh (~800,000) | 2019–2025 | Business Standard; News9live, Oct 2025 |
| Share of women in workforce | ~60% | 2025 | News9live, Oct 2025 |
| Share of India's fireworks production | ~90% | 2022–2025 | Business Standard; Rau's IAS Compass; Deccan Herald |
| Licensed factories/units | ~1,000–1,150 | 2022–2025 | Rau's IAS Compass; TANFAMA (2022); News9live (2025) |
| India's total fireworks exports (HS 3604) | $645,145 | 2023 | UN Comtrade, via trendeconomy.com |
| India's total fireworks exports (HS 3604) | $2.5 million | 2022 | UN Comtrade, via trendeconomy.com |
| TANFAMA factories tied up with CSIR-NEERI | 380+ | 2019–2020 | Deccan Herald, TANFAMA |
| Sivakasi output carrying the green-cracker tag (TANFAMA estimate) | ~80% | 2019–2020 | Deccan Herald, TANFAMA |
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