Texfair 2015: ‘Textiledom’ in South gets a boost

Coimbatore district, known as the textile hub of Tamil Nadu or is called as the ´Manchester of South India´, has over 900 textile mills, 7 million spindles, 1 lakh rotors, 2 lakh powerlooms, 99,000 automatic shuttle looms, 59,000 plain looms, 39,000 semi-automatic looms, and over 70 per cent of machinery, spares & accessories, rotors, etc. are manufactured here. This itself summarises the potential of the textile industry in Coimbatore. To further tap the growing potential of textiles in South India, The Southern India Mills´ Association (SIMA), the single largest employer´s organisation for the organised textile industry in India, organised Texfair 2015 during January 09-12, 2015 at CODISSIA Trade Fair Complex, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.

This event provided an excellent opportunity to textile machinery manufacturers to showcase their products to the textile industry. Speaking at the inauguration of Texfair 2015, Prem Malik, Chairman, Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) said, ´The textile industry has the potential to cross a turnover of $350 billion by 2025 if it diversifies to new product categories like man-made fibres (MMF) segment.´

He further added, ´Our share in fabric and apparel exports is just 4 per cent, while China has 44 per cent. We have to do a lot. For achieving economies of scale and attracting FDI, we need to scale up our production facilities, especially in fabrics and garments, both of which are dominated by sub-optimal sizes at present.´
Chairman of Texfair 2015, S Dinakaran, said that the exhibition has over 180 participants and about 240 stalls. Exhibitors have come from various parts of India including Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Haryana, and other foreign countries like China, Germany and Switzerland.

Speaking about the idea behind this exhibition, Dr K Selvaraju, Secretary General, SIMA, said, ´SIMA conceived of conducting exhibition with the idea of our Prime Minister Narendra Modiji´s vision of ´Make in India.´
T Rajkumar, Chairman, SIMA, expected the government to announce the fibre policy soon to ensure stability in cotton prices.

´The event was conceived way back in 2000, and in 2001, the first Texfair event was organised. The primary objective of the event is to get indigenes, import substitution, and also encourage small and medium sized players to participate. Texfair 2015 is its ninth edition. In the last 13-14 years, we have helped a lot of small and medium sized companies to get a good visibility,´ Dr Selvaraju added.

Speaking about the uniqueness of the event, Dr Selvaraju said that unlike other fairs, Texfair is organised by user industry. Nowhere in the world, a user industry organises an event. ´In other fairs, people participate just for visibility, but in Texfair, people participate for visibility as well as business. Even the purchase team of a company visits the event. This time around, we are providing better facilities. CODISSIA has air conditioned ´D´ Hall as well, which was not earlier. Now, we have a 100 per cent air conditioned exhibition with international standards, food court, etc. You will feel like going to Europe fair. Unlike Mumbai or Ahmedabad or Delhi fair, Coimbatore is the hub for textile business and it is very cheap for anybody to come and visit the fair and return.´

Coimbatore: The hub
Speaking on why they selected Coimbatore as the destination, Dr Selvaraju says, ´The textile industry in Coimbatore has been growing tremendously in the last decade or so and we have a requirement of about 23.5 million spindles. Coimbatore is also home to some of leading textile companies in India, including Lakshmi Machine Works, KPR Mill, etc. Coimbatore has more star-rated hotels<