Hygiene & feminine care to drive growth in nonwovens
08 May '10
4 min read
Dr Seshadri Ramkumar
Need for Technical Textiles Sector in India The economic strength of the Indian textiles industry comes from its export earnings. The competitive advantage that India had in terms of its labor cost has been eroding slowly and smaller nations such as Bangladesh and Vietnam due to cheaper labor and trade agreements with the US and Europe are gaining advantageous positions with regard to foreign trade. More recently, the decrease in the consumer spending and the global economic recession have forced the Indian textile industry to start thinking seriously about technical textiles. The government and the industry are looking for diversification opportunities to enlarge the overall market size of the Indian textiles industry. India textiles industry wants to reach the size of US $ 115 billion by 2012.
The expectation is that the technical textiles sector will contribute at least 10% to the overall market size, which will be US $ 11.5 billion. The current value of the Indian technical textiles sector is around US $8 billion. This means, India's technical textiles sector has to nearly double in size in years ahead. All stake holders, i.e., industry and trade associations, Government, industry related trade associations and textile academia and working seriously to build a viable technical textiles sector in India. In this connection, Government of India is playing a significant role in creating awareness and developing a knowledge base for the NWTT sector. Since mid 2000s, the government has supported many technical awareness programs. Both INDA and EDANA have offered sector wise training programs in major textile hubs such as Surat, Coimbatore, New Delhi, etc.
The article first appeared in May 2010 issue of Nonwovens Industry.