This article will highlight some of the recent developments that have taken place in India to boost the technical textile industry. In addition, we predict that Indias per capita consumption of nonwovens and technical textiles will be double than that of the US when India reaches a per capita GDP of US$45,028 which is the current per capita GDP of the United States. Interestingly, at this per capita GDP level, United States consumption is far less than what India would be having. An important prediction is that in the next two decades, the rate of growth of nonwoven and technical textile industry will be far ahead than what it was in the US and Europe during the last three decades, during which the industry in the western hemisphere grew and matured. Therefore, growth is certain in India and hence it is the place for international players to be active.

Indias Consumption of Nonwovens (2007-2050)

The liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991 coincided with the booming of information technology sector. This fortuitous development has led to the growth of middle class population with disposable incomes. In addition, since 2000 India is gearing up with one-stop superstores which are commonly referred to as big bazaars and most recently with organized retail stores and malls. The economy and the growth in the sales outlets will lead to a higher consumption of disposable items such as nonwovens. Furthermore, the Government is planning to spend a large sum of money for infrastructure projects such as highways and bridges which consume semi-durable and durable nonwovens and technical textiles.

According to estimates by INDA and EDANA, the current per capita consumption of nonwovens in India is less than the meager amount of 100 grams, whereas the per capita consumption of nonwovens in developed markets such as US and Western Europe is around 3-3.5 kilograms. As is evident from the growth of the nonwoven industry in developed markets, it has taken nearly four decades to cross the threshold level of 3 kilograms per capita consumption. More interestingly, the per capita consumption of nonwovens is directly correlated with the per capita income levels of the population. Nonwoven and technical textile pundits are in agreement with this theory. However, no one has predicted the growth of the nonwoven industry based on per capita consumption in India in relation to Indias per capita income level for the next four decades. Our analysis using per capita income levels from World Bank has led to some interesting conclusions that will be of enormous interest to the global nonwoven and technical textile industry. For this analysis, we have used certain baseline figures which were drawn from the data published by the World Bank. We present our original estimates of Indias per capita nonwoven consumption based on World Banks income estimates. As per the World Bank data for 2007, per capita GDP of the United States and India are US$ 45,817 and US$ 946.1 respectively. At this per capita income level, we assume Indias per capita consumption of nonwovens is 80 grams. We are using the annual growth rate for the US and Indias economy to be 4.6% and 13.27% respectively. These figures are the average growth rates of the two countries US and India respectively from 2003-2007. We have used these growth rates to calculate the per capita nonwoven consumption for India and USA for the years 2005-2050. Tables I and II provide the per capita income levels and the corresponding nonwoven consumption for the years 2005-2050. Since the data will be exhaustive, we are providing the data for every five years from 2005-2050.

Table I:

CONSUMPTION OF NONWOVENS IN INDIA vs. GDP PER CAPITA

(ASSUMING AN INCREASE OF 13.27% IN PER CAPITA EVERY YEAR)

(Per Capita GDP Source: World Bank)