Technical textiles have been slowly but steadily gaining ground due to one or more of the reasons such as functional requirement, health and safety, cost effectiveness, durability, high strength, light weight, versatility, customisation, user friendliness, eco-friendliness, logistical convenience, etc. Unlike conventional textiles used traditionally for clothing or furnishing, technical textiles are used basically on account of their specific physical and functional properties and mostly by other user industries. Depending on the product characteristics, functional requirements and end-use applications the highly diversified range of technical textile products have been grouped into 12 sectors application-wise.

Technical textile is an emerging area for investment in India. At present, India's contribution in the global technical textile industry is insignificant even though it is the second largest account for over 25% of all fibre consumed and almost 50% of the total textile activity in certain industrialised countries. Even in China, technical textiles accounted for 20% of the total consumption in the year 2000. However in India, the consumption of technical textiles is insignificant, but the growth rate is estimated at 3%, i.e. higher than the growth rate for conventional textiles.

Status and prospects of Indian technical textiles

The Indian industry produces items of all the twelve segments of the technical textile industry though in varying quantities. Some items are produced in significant quantity while some other items are produced in small quantity with most of the requirement being met through imports.

The production of technical textile items in the small scale sector in an unorganised fragmented manner is also significant. The technology used by the small and medium scale units is, by and large, traditional. Not many projects are based on the state of-the-art technology comparable to global players. The reason for low level of technology could be attributed to non-availability of indigenous machinery and also lack of knowledge about the latest machinery available in the world market or risk perception in such investment.

The market size and potential of technical textile component in twelve segments of the technical textile industry has been estimated at Rs 19,130 crore during the year 2003-04 and Rs 29,579 crore in 2007-08. Since in some products technical textile forms a part of the product, the market size of the finished products has also been estimated. The segment-wise details are given in Table 1.