An incubation facility at the South India Textile Research Association’s (SITRA) centre of excellence for medical textiles in Coimbatore will be commissioned three months to support new ventures in medical textiles.

Set up at a cost of Rs 2 crore, the dedicated incubation centre for medical textiles can incubate two units at a time for a period of six months to two years, SITRA Director Prakash Vasudevan told reporters in Coimbatore.

Medical textiles is growing in India at 13 per cent to 15 per cent annually with more hospitals using disposable products. SITRA’s centre of excellence has so far completed 25 projects, three of which have been commercialised.

Vasudevan said SITRA has tied up with some overseas universities for technology and more such agreements with universities in Australia, Germany, and Korea are in the pipeline.

The SITRA Director is also trying to turn the Association into a self-sustaining unit in five years. “Just 12 per cent to 13 per cent of our revenue is from government grant. The rest are generated by SITRA. We hope to be self-sustainable in another five years,” Vasudevan said.

SITRA, which gets non-plan support and plan support from the Union Government, takes up three to five research projects a year. It has so far focused on the spinning sector but it is now turning its attention to the weaving, and processing sectors.

SITRA’s testing facilities and energy audits are used widely by the industry and there are plans to set up a centre at State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu Limited (SIPCOT), Perundurai, to extend technical guidance to textile processing units there. (SH)