National Textile Corporation (NTC) – the Indian government owned public sector company, which was set up with a mandate to manage sick textile mills, is foraying into a joint venture with two foreign entities to market technical textile products and later set up production plants in India.

According to a top source in the Ministry of Textiles, NTC invited ‘Expressions of Interests’ (EoI’s) to set up joint venture technical textiles plants in India, in which 18 Indian and foreign companies expressed interest.

Of these, two foreign entities were selected with whom NTC has signed joint venture agreements as a precursor to setting up the industrial projects. Agreements have been signed to market and later produce two technical textile products in India, namely geotextiles and protective textiles.

Explaining the reason for initially signing a joint venture agreement, the source explained, “We would like to develop expertise in marketing of these products, before we take up production of these products”.

“We have set a target of selling a pre-determined quantity and value of these products before we set up plants. The JV partner will be a preferential supplier to the JV, however, the JV is also free to source products from anywhere, depending on pricing”, he added.

The agreement will be converted in to a marketing joint venture, which will later on set up the plant to produce these two products, subject to sales reaching a predetermined scale. As yet, locations for setting up the plants have not been finalised, the source revealed.