Light industry
Light industry, together with the food industry, forms the third group of the ASM and arose mainly on cotton growing and sericulture. Its branches: cotton ginning, textiles, knitwear, garment making, footwear, tanning and silk production. A ginning plant separates cotton into fibre and seed; being the branch that first processes the raw material, it is built in cotton-growing districts near a railway or road. The first ginning plant was built in Tashkent in the 1870s, and now highly mechanized plants operate. Silk reeling is best done where cocoons are raised because carrying them is costly; reeling mills employ mostly women, so they are sited in small and medium towns of silkworm-rearing areas. Textiles are the most important branch of light industry; spinning, weaving and finishing are done in stages. Besides raw material, labour, consumers and transport are considered. Old fabrics such as atlas (khan-atlas) and beqasam spread along the Great Silk Road. Today, instead of selling raw cotton fibre abroad, attention goes to processing it into yarn, fabric and ready-made clothes; clusters that do everything from cotton to textiles in one place have appeared. Khiva is a carpet centre, Gijduvan and Rishton pottery centres, and Urgut and Shahrisabz handicraft centres.
“From cotton to shirt”: groups draw the chain cotton → fibre → yarn → fabric → clothes and write where each stage should be located.