‘Miles to go in technical textiles’

“In technical textiles, we are doing something, but not enough. There is a long journey, but we have not even started it. We have just only 2200 units in technical textiles in this whole big country. Even in the 9 textile research associations, which have been entrusted with the tasks of Centres of Excellence, not much has been done. We need a lot more efforts,” the first few sentences from the Textile Commissioner, Dr Kavita Gupta, set the tone for the 6th Annual General Meeting and the Knowledge Sharing Session of the Indian Technical Textile Association, held at the Mumbai Cricket Association, Bandra-Kurla Complex in Mumbai recently.

To create the tempo for manufacturing for the industry, and generate market demand for the technical textiles should be our main focus. The industry can be promoted by bringing in joint ventures with technology transfers from abroad and also by innovating with the assistance of TRAs, she said. “We have potential, but we are far back. In textile industry, the contribution of technical textiles is only 10 per cent of which 5 to 6 per cent is packaging, which cannot be considered as real technical textiles. So, the real share is just 4 to 5 per cent. But in Germany, the proportion of technical textiles constitute 70 per cent,” Dr Gupta said.

Said Dr Gupta: “The demand is already there and has been growing fast. For instance, for geotextiles, as seen in the north-east region, the demand has been created by the Government. The road experiments have proved successful and this year, more seminars and awareness campaigns are being conducted on pan-India basis. The Government has earmarked special funds to promote geotextiles. In the same way, agrotextiles have also picked up in a major way.The Agriculture Universities and the Ministry are being roped in to give a boost to agrotextiles. Medical textiles is another area, where there is an increase of interest in using medical textiles by Government and private hospitals.”