Technical textiles sector in India would attract an expected investments of Rs 5,000 crores by 2012

February 23, 2011 - India

The Technical textile industry, which comprises 90 percent of Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is expected to register a growth of 12-15 percent per annum till 2020, said Rita Menon, Secretary, Ministry of Textiles in New Delhi on Wednesday.

"The technical textiles industry is expected to register a growth of 11 percent per annum till 2012-13 and is likely to grow at 6-8 percent per annum till 2020 without any policy interventions. However, if government interventions take place in the form of regulatory push, the growth of technical textiles industry can be estimated at 12-15 percent per annum till 2020," added Menon during a CII event on "Techtex India Summit 2011."

She also mentioned that as on date there are 3000 units manufacturing technical textiles in the country, of which about 90 percent are in the SME sector and around 1,000 units have commenced production during the last 5 years.

In fact, the market size of technical textiles in India stands at Rs 417.6 billion (2008-09) and it has grown at a CAGR of 9.6 percent from Rs 219.9 billion in 02-03.

Packtech is the largest segment accounting for a 35 percent share in overall market size of Technical Textiles in India in FY08 followed by Clothtech (16.5 percent), Hometech (12 percent) and Indutech (7.7 percent).

At present, India imports approximately USD 1.4 billon worth of technical textile products annually. Stating that she said, "This indicates good market potential, even for large scale manufacturing capacities targeted at domestic market itself. It is however important to realize that most of these imports are of high tech, specialty products."

However, the technical textile sector would attract an expected investments of Rs 5,000 crores by 2012 and employment is expected to increase to 12 lakhs.

To promote technical textiles in the country, the Ministry of Textiles have also introduced the Technology Mission, which comprises two mini-missions which would run for five years (2010-11 to 2014-15) with an plan outlay of Rs 200 crore.

Under one of the mini-missions, the government would look into issues like standardization, creation of common testing facilities with national/international accreditation, indigenous development of prototypes and setting up of a resource centre with IT infrastructure.

The mission has plan to establish four new Centres of Excellence (COEs). Each COE would be provided with Rs 25 crore for the provision of infrastructure support to the technical textile manufacturers. The COEs will be in the areas of Non-wovens, Composties, Indutech and Sportech.

However, under the second mini-mission, the government has aimed at providing support for the development of the domestic and export market for technical textiles especially targeted towards assisting the SMEs.