Technical textile is the next sunrise sector for India

Indian technical textiles has huge potential is one of the fastest growing segment of the Indian economy. Technical textiles are an important part of the textile industry and its potential still largely untapped in India. With increase in disposable income, the consumption of technical textile is expected to increase atleast at 20 percent per annum in the next two years.

The success in technical textiles can come with creativity, innovation and versatility in fibres, yarns and woven/knitted/nonwoven fabrics with applications spanning an enormous range of uses. Currently, our technical textile stands at USD 13 billion in size .

The scheme for growth and development of technical textiles (SGDTP) has been designed to promote indigenous manufacture of technical textile to exploit to global opportunities and cater to the domestic demand.

According to Shishir Jaipuria, Chairman, FICCI Committee on Textiles and Technical Textiles, said at Technotex 2014 held in India said that technical textiles has a major role to play in the growth of the overall textiles sector in India. The theme for this year’s exhibition is ‘accelerating technical textile usage and strengthening institutional buying’.

While, Zohra Chatterjee, Secretary, Ministry of Textiles called it the next sunrise sector for which the government is looking at a five-fold increase in the fund outlay for the sector during the 12th Five Year Plan. A major initiative will also be to drive up the growth of the sector in the north-eastern states.

A pilot scheme budgeted at Rs 500 crore has also been proposed for geo textiles. There are also plans to hike the FDI for this sector. The government has already launched an integrated skill development scheme to train 15 million people in this field by 2020.

The government aims at strengthening research in this field, organising buyer seller meets, providing a national policy framework and also promoting the agro technical textiles in the north eastern states where two demonstration centres are already underway, to showcase the benefits and usage of technical textiles, especially natural fibres.

Government has also launched Technology mission on technical textiles (TMTT) with two-mini missions for a period of five years (from 2010-11 to 2014-15) with a fun outlay of Rs 2oo crore to overcome the issue faced by the technical textile industry like lack of basic infrastructure in terms of testing facilities, lack of market development support, skilled manpower, lack of R&D , absence of regulatory measures , absence of specification and standards for technical textiles etc.