Secondary Activities: Manufacturing and Industrial Location
This domain examines how raw materials are transformed and why factories locate where they do. Exam questions test Weber’s least-cost theory, weight-losing and weight-gaining industries, agglomeration, footloose industry and Assam’s tea, petroleum, cement, paper and food-processing units.
Core rules and concepts
- Secondary activities include manufacturing, processing, construction and power generation.
- Weber minimises transport, labour and agglomeration costs; his model assumes an isotropic plain, known resources and fixed labour.
- Weight-losing industries locate near raw materials; weight-gaining industries locate near markets.
- Other factors: energy, capital, skilled labour, policy incentives, connectivity and environmental clearance.
- Footloose industries face low transport costs and can locate for amenity or policy.
Worked example
A firm processes fresh tea leaf into made tea. Fresh leaf is bulky and perishable, while made tea is lighter and storable. Reasoning: this is weight-losing and perishability-sensitive, so factories cluster near gardens, as around Dibrugarh and Golaghat. By contrast, a soft-drink bottler is weight-gaining because water and bottles are bulky, so it locates near its market.
Traps that cost marks
- Applying Weber universally; real firms face taxes, technology and policy.
- Reversing weight-losing and weight-gaining logic.
- Assuming all manufacturing is footloose.
- Ignoring Assam’s constraints: flood damage, erosion, narrow local market and long freight distances.
Assam’s industrial profile includes tea processing, the Digboi, Numaligarh and Bongaigaon refineries, cement at Umrangso, paper and food processing. Match each to a locational factor rather than listing names.