The Buyer-Seller Meet & Seminar was organised jointly by the Bombay Textile research Association (BTRA) and the Regional Office of the Textile Commissioner, Navi Mumbai.
Opportunities for the growth of geotextiles are immense, but the challenges to tackle before grappling with the scope are also many, said Satish Naik, a consultant on geotextiles, who incidentally is the CEO of BEST Geotechnics Pvt Ltd, Mumbai. Speaking at a Buyer-Seller Meet-cum-Seminar on ´Technical Textiles with Special Reference to Geotextiles´ at the BTRA Campus in Mumbai recently, he listed the opportunities on the way forward to exploiting the potential of geotextiles as: development of infrastructure by way of roads, railway network, etc.; environmental awareness requiring various landfill solutions; development of canals for various irrigation solutions; water containment and conveying systems; stabilization slopes of embankments, and; stabilization of road sub-grades. He also told the gathering that lack of awareness, dearth of technical personnel, inadequate and outdated standards are blocking the progress in the use of geotextiles for the improvement of the country´s economy.
The Buyer-Seller Meet & Seminar was organized jointly by the Bombay Textile research Association (BTRA) and the Regional Office of the Textile Commissioner, Navi Mumbai. Earlier, welcoming the gathering, D Ravikumar, Deputy Director of the Regional Office of the Textile Commissioner, said that the market for geotextile products is about Rs 272 crore and this buyer-seller meet has been organized to help tap this market in India and abroad. He thanked VK Patil, Senior Scientific Officer, Technical Textile & Nonwoven, BTRA, for his tireless efforts in coordinating the arrangements for the seminar. ´Young talents are here to give knowledge on geotextiles and about seven companies are displaying what they could offer on the latest in geotextiles,´ Ravikumar said.
´BTRA in its own way has been deeply involved in testing or development of prototypes, etc in geotextiles´ said AN Desai Director of BTRA, which is the Centre of Excellence for geotextiles. We have been working with GSI towards forming excellent standards for geotextiles. One of the wings of GSI is GRI, which gives accreditation to labs in geosynthetics. BTRA lab is the third such lab in the Asia and Asia Pacific to get their accreditation three years back. We have formed GSI India and sometime in November or December in 2015, we will be holding an international seminar on geotextiles particularly with reference to standardization and testing issues,´ said Desai.
India has the second largest road network in the world, with a road length of 23 million km, comprising National Highways/Expressways, State Highways, major ct Roads and other District Roads, and Village Roads. Roads carry nearly 60 per cent of freight and 87.4 per cent of passenger traffic; National Highways, though constitute only 2 per cent of the road network, carry around 40 per cent of the total traffic, said B Bharati, Joint Textile Commissioner, who was the Chief Guest. This infrastructure still has its own limitations and Indian roads have less than optimum strength and endurance. The poor condition of Indian roads has led to high incidences of road accidents in India, where as per estimates, every hour 14 people die due to road accidents. It is estimated that road accidents cause an estimated loss of 1 per cent to the country´s GDP, revealed Bharati.
The Government of India has already sanctioned numerous projects for road development and it clearly known that infrastructure development will be at the top on the agenda for planning in the coming years. There is little doubt about the benefits of geote