With more than 25,000 small, medium and large industries, the city's primary industries are engineering and textiles. Coimbatore is called the "Manchester of South India" due to its extensive textile industry, fed by the surrounding cotton fields. The district also houses the country's largest amount of hosiery and poultry industries. The city has two special economic zones (SEZ), the Coimbatore Hi-Tech Infrastructure (CHIL) SEZ and the Coimbatore TIDEL park, and at least five more SEZs are in the pipeline. As of 2005, when Tirupur was a part of Coimbatore district, Coimbatore was the highest revenue earning district in Tamil Nadu, In 2010, Coimbatore ranked 15th in the list of most competitive (by business environment) Indian cities.
An insignificant little town prone to droughts and earthquakes till the early years of the 20th century, Coimbatore experienced a textile boom in the 1920s and 1930s. Though, Robert Stanes had established Coimbatore's first textile mills as early as the late 19th century, it was during this period that Coimbatore emerged as a prominent industrial centre. Narayanaswamy Naidu's Dhandayuthapani Foundry, D. Balasundaram Naidu's Textool, the Lakshmi Machine Works, the Kalleeswara Mills and the Somasundra Mills are some of the important textile and machine units which emerged during the early 1900s.
Coimbatore has trade associations like CODISSIA, COINDIA, SITRA and COJEWEL representing industries in the city. Coimbatore also has a 160,000 square feet (15,000 m) trade fair ground, built in 1999. It was named COINTEC due to its hosting of INTEC (Small Industries Exhibition). The Trade Fair complex, one of the country's largest, was built in six months, and is owned by CODISSIA (Coimbatore District Small Industries Association), It is also the country's largest pillar-free hall, according to the Limca Book of Records.
Coimbatore houses a large number of small and medium textile mills. It also has central
