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Technical textiles to be next Indian sunrise industry

26 Mar '14

5 min read

The inaugural session of Technotex 2014, the 3rd international conference on technical textiles highlighted the vision of the industry towards taking this sector to new growth trajectory.

Organised jointly by the Ministry of Textiles and FICCI, key officials of the Ministry of Textiles, as well as the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka were present at the conference, which was attended by stakeholders from both India and overseas.

Shri. Shishir Jaipuria, Chairman – Textiles and Technical Textiles Committee, FICCI, opened the session outlining the huge potential of the technical textiles sector, which is currently US$ 13 billion in size and expected to grow at 20 per cent per annum in the next two years. With imports touching US$5 billion, he stressed on the urgency for India to develop indigenous products to boost domestic growth.

Highlighting the theme for this year’s conference, which is ‘Accelerating technical textile usage and strengthening institutional buying’, Shri. Jaipuria said that technical textiles had a major role to play in the growth of the overall textiles sector in India. He also mentioned that Technotex had grown in stature with countries participating from all across the globe. This year the event had two major delegations from Taiwan and more than 40 international companies. The event, which also had a buyer-seller meet, a unique platform for foreign companies to network and actively engage with Indian companies in this rapidly growing market.

Shri. Sujit Gulati, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Textiles, Government of India, threw light on the initiatives of the government focused around promotion of technical textiles in India. He said that this year Technotex aimed to build and enhance the ‘investment’ environment for the technical textiles sector in the country.

He highlighted a few schemes, starting with the four centres of excellence that were raised to eight in the Technology Mission programme of 2010, along with encouraging entrepreneurs and start-ups to engage in this sector.

The government aimed at strengthening research in this field, organising buyer seller meets, providing a national policy framework and also promoting the agro technical textiles in the north eastern states where two demonstration centres are already under way, to showcase the benefits and usage of technical textiles, especially natural fibres.

To generate skilled manpower, the subject has also been made part of the curriculum in schools and colleges through the intervention of the Indian Technical Textiles Association (ITTA). Technotex aimed to provide a road map for the industry to explore the repository of technical textiles in India.