Major Industries
ICSE Class 7 · Geography · Chapter 10
What this chapter covers
- What makes an industry important
- Iron and steel industry
- Cotton textile industry
- Sugar industry
- Information technology industry
- Shipbuilding industry
- Automobile industry
- Fishing
- Important industrial centres on the world map
Key points
- An industrial centre is a place where many factories are grouped; it grows where raw materials, power, labour, transport and markets come together.
- Iron and steel is a basic, heavy industry that uses iron ore, coking coal, limestone and manganese; plants lie near coal or ore, or on coasts. Centres include Jamshedpur, Bhilai, Pittsburgh, the Ruhr, Anshan and Osaka.
- Cotton textiles pass through ginning, spinning, weaving and finishing; a humid climate helps spinning. Centres include Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, Manchester, Osaka and Shanghai.
- Sugar comes from cane in hot, wet lands and beet in cool lands; mills stand near the fields because cut cane loses sugar quickly. Brazil and India lead in cane sugar.
- Information technology is a footloose industry that needs skilled people, power and fast communication. Silicon Valley and Bengaluru are its best-known centres.
- Shipbuilding is an assembly industry that needs deep, sheltered harbours and steel; South Korea, China and Japan lead, and India builds ships at Visakhapatnam, Kochi, Mumbai and Kolkata.
- The automobile industry uses assembly lines and many ancillary industries; Detroit, Toyota City, Wolfsburg, Turin, Shanghai and Chennai are major centres.
- Great fishing grounds lie on plankton-rich continental shelves: warm and cold currents meet at the Grand Banks and around Japan, while off Peru a cold current brings up nutrients.
- Overfishing can be prevented by closed seasons, rules on net size and limits on the number of boats.
Questions answered
Why is the iron and steel industry called a basic industry?
Its product, steel, is the raw material of many other industries, such as shipbuilding, automobiles, railways, construction and machine making. Without steel these industries cannot work.
Name the four main raw materials of a steel plant and say why steel plants are usually built near coalfields or iron ore mines.
Iron ore, coking coal, limestone and manganese. These raw materials are heavy and needed in large amounts, so building the plant close to them saves transport cost.
Arrange these steps of the cotton textile industry in the correct order: weaving, ginning, finishing, spinning.
Ginning, spinning, weaving, finishing.
Give two reasons why Mumbai became an important cotton textile centre.
Its humid climate stops fine thread from breaking during spinning, and its port allowed machines to be imported and cloth to be exported. Cotton from the black-soil region of the Deccan was also close by.
Why must sugar mills be built close to sugar cane fields?
Cane must be crushed within about a day of cutting, or its juice dries and the amount of sugar falls. Cane is also heavy and bulky, so carrying it far would be costly.
What are bagasse and molasses, and how is each used?
Bagasse is the crushed fibre left after juice is squeezed from cane; it is burnt as fuel or used to make paper. Molasses is the thick syrup left after sugar crystals are removed; it is used to make alcohol and cattle feed.
Why is the information technology industry called a footloose industry?
It does not depend on any heavy raw material, and its products can be sent through the internet. It can therefore be set up wherever skilled people, electricity and good communication links are available.
Explain why shipbuilding and automobile manufacture are called assembly industries.
In both, parts made by many other factories, such as steel plates, engines, tyres, glass and wiring, are brought together and fitted into one finished product.