Factories Act, 1948 is an act to consolidate and amend the law regulating Labour in factories. The main objective of the Act is to ensure adequate safety measures but also to promote health and welfare of the workers emp

The definition of the manufacturing process is exhaustive. Under the present definition even transporting, washing, cleaning, oiling, and packing which do not involve any transformation as such which is necessary to constitute a manufacturing process in its generic sense, are nonetheless treated as a manufacturing process. The definition is artificially projected beyond the scope of the natural meaning of what the words might convey thus covering a very wide range of activities. Madras High Court in the case of In re. Seshadrinatha Sarma, 1966 (2) LLJ 235 held that to constitute a manufacture there should not be essentially some kind of transformation of substance and the article need not become commercially as another and different article from that at which it begins its existence so long as there has been an indisputable transformation of substance by the use of machinery and transformed substance is commercially marketable. Division Bench of A.P. High Court held that to determine where certain premises is factory, it is necessary that it should carry on manufacturing process and it does not require that the process should end in a substance being manufactured. The following processes have been held to be manufacturing processes: Sun Cured tobacco leaves are subjected to processes of moistening, stripping, breaking up, adaption, and packing, with a view to transport to the company's main factory for their use in manufacturing cigarettes ( V.P. Gopala Rao v. Public Prosecutor, AIR 1970 S.C. 66 ). The operation of peeling, washing, etc., of prawns for putting them in cold storage is a process with a view to the sale or use or disposal of the prawns ( R.E. DSouza v. Krishnan Nair, 1968 F.J.R. 469 ). Process carried out in salt works in converting seawater into salt. In Ardeshir V. Bombay State (AIR 1962 SC 29) the process carried out in the salt works comes within the definition of manufacturing process' in Section 2 (k) in as much as salt can be said to have been manufactured from sea water by the process of treatment and adaptation of seawater into salt. The Making of Bidies. ( State of Bombay v. Ali.Saheb kashim Tamboli, (1995)2LLJ 182 ).