Knitwear industry to see their dream come true with the inauguration of KTM Centre

The Indian knitwear industry to soon see their dream coming true as Zohra Chatterji, Secretary, Union textile ministry will be inaugurating the Knitwear Technology Mission Centre on 6th May in Tirupur.

The KTM, an Rs.13 crore project by Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC) will focus on newer and greener technology in manufacture; enhance designing capability of knitwear sector aimed at higher value addition across the apparel value chain and also to bring round the year business.

The Knitwear Technology Mission (KTM) will help develop innovative apparel categories for sportswear, swimwear and varieties of performance wear mainly from man-made fiber like polyester and nylon by offering requisite services to trade and industry, as there was huge market of more than 75 to 80 billion dollars for sportswear and swim wear.

KTM will help the knitwear manufacturers to broaden your horizons more into the production of apparels made of man-made fibres and thereby give value-addition to their product portfolio so that Indian exporters can tap these markets.

KTM will also be providing various support services to knitwear sector including research, consultancy and training, processing, garmenting, design development, testing & certification, knowledge service and investor facilitation services on non-profit basis. Also, various training programs and specialized courses will be offered to student community to become industry ready professionals. It has the capacity to train 5,000 personnel every year.

Padma Shri and KTM Chairman A Sakthivel, also the President of FIEO, said that the Mission will be a driving force for the growth of knitwear in the years to come. As majority of the countries has started switching to high fashion wear from manmade fibre yarn, as against almost 95 per cent cotton yarn in India.

Latest version of Tricot Warp knitting machine has been imported from Germany by KTM, which the Indian apparel exporting community can utilize them for their sampling needs.

It will not only focus on product development using newer fabrics but also provide technical training to the businessmen in the sector.

AEPC has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Pailung Machinery Mill Ltd., Taiwan for providing latest machines and technology support to enhance production of value added textile products.

AEPC’s next step is expansion of the centre and further strengthen the activities of KTM for which they recently had a discussion with the textile ministry.