South India has huge potential for investments in technical textiles given the available manpower and the presence of the automobile industry which is a major customer, according to media reports.

At a conference on technical textiles in Coimbatore, Pramod Kumar Khosla, Chairman of Indian Technical Textile Association (ITTA) said every car requires at least seven kg of technical textiles and there is tremendous potential in the automobile sector.

Technical textiles is a research oriented industry, he said. For the last few years, the industry has grown worldwide and the global market value for technical textiles is estimated $144 billion in 2014 which is projected to rise to $200 billion dollars by 2020. Woven, non-woven and knitting technologies have thrown open huge opportunities, he said.

The ITTA chief said the Indian armed forces is also potentially a huge market for the technical textile sector given their need for materials for trenches and covers for tanks, planes and missiles.

Khosla also said that around 300 products under the category of technical textiles will soon be classified by getting Harmonised System (HS) code. ITTA has approached the government for classification of the products and a committee has been formed to identify the products to give HS code.

He said that without the HS code, the technical textiles sector was facing serious problems, including litigation. Once the classification was made, manufacturers can concentrate on these products.

S.K. Sundararaman, Chairman of the Task Force on Technical Textiles, CII Coimbatore Zone, said there are 10 broad segments of technical textiles. While the gestation period for a technical textile project is long and investments in marketing and technology are high, the opportunities are huge.

For instance, the market size for hygiene products (diapers) in the country is estimated to be nearly Rs. 3500 crore.

Those into garment sector can also tap the market for garment-based technical textile products.

K.V. Srinivasan, chairman of CII Coimbatore, said that in India, the technical textiles sector is seeing steady growth and it is between 12 per cent and 15 per cent depending on the segment. The market size is expected to be over Rs. 1,50,000 crore in the next two years. The investment potential is promising and in south India, Kerala and Tamil Nadu have shown immense potential for investment because of the existing textile manufacturing base. (SH)