Government Draws Up Roadmap For Domestic Technical Textile Market

Tech Textiles & Nonwovens

Government Draws Up Roadmap For Domestic Technical Textile Market

The Union textile ministry has drawn up a comprehensive roadmap in order to boost the technical textile manufacturing base in the country. The ministry is looking to double the market size for these high-value functional and non-wovens textiles to around Rs 2,00,000 crore in the next five years. Over the last few years, the domestic high growth potential technical textile market has shown a good deal of momentum growing at a CAGR of over 10 per cent. However, concerted efforts are being initiated now to ramp up this growth rate to around 20 per cent going forward.

The government's effort also assumes a greater significance at a time when the traditional textile industry is struggling to grow at a single digit. Besides, the shrinking margins in the conventional textile manufacturing have put immense pressure on the existing business models across the value chain. Technical textiles known for its functional attributes are non non-apparel textiles which have got a wide range of applications as diverse as fire retardant clothing, sanitary napkins, diapers, wipes, medical disposables, parachute fabrics, high altitude protective clothing, hoardings, signages and many more.

Even as the market for these textiles has made some headways in India in the last decade, the domestic industry (less than 3 per cent of the global market) continues to be at a nascent stage as compared to developed economies. While a large part of the demand comes from developed countries, the increasing industrialisation and development of emerging countries is driving the growth of the overall market. The US is the largest market for consumption of technical textile products, accounting for a share of 23 per cent followed by western Europe, China and Japan with a share of 22 per cent, 13 per cent and 7 per cent, respectively.

"The technical textile sector is an emerging area and presents huge potential in the changing macro and micro economic conditions. Growing industrialisation, increasing access to medical care and huge infrastructure investment is expected to drive the growth. The government is taking growth of technical textiles on priority basis by providing financial and other possible support to the industry," says Kavita Gupta, textile commissioner, Government of India, adding that the road map prepared now will take the sector to its next growth phase in the next few years. The textile ministry is also deliberating with various other ministries which can come up with requisite guidelines that can boost the demand of these textiles by making their usage mandatory.

In order to support the industry in terms of research, testing training as also product and market development, the government has indentified and set up eight product-focused Centres of Excellence (CoEs) in the country. While Mumbai-based Synthetic and Art silk Mills' Association (popularly known as Sasmira) has been developed as the CoE for technical textiles used in the agriculture sector such as shade nets and insect protection nets, the South India Textile Research Association in Coimbatore has been entrusted with the task of promoting medical textiles likes of disposables and implants. Similarly, Delhi-based North India Textiles Mills Association has created facilities for protective textiles and Bombay Textile Research Association has been facilitated to set up centre for the development of base for technical textiles (geotextiles), finding applications in infrastructure projects like roads and irrigation. Ahmedabad Textile Industry's Research Association is working as CoE for composites.

Apart from five textile research associations, government has also recognised PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore as CoE for industrial textiles having a wide range of products such as conveyor belts, automobile textiles, filters etc. DKTE Society's Textile and Engineering Institute, Ichalkaranji is CoE for nonwovens, while Wool Research Association, Thane is CoE for sportech, the segment comprises technical textile products used in sports and leisure such as shoes, sports equipment, flying, sailing and climbing sports.