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Talking
about the technical textile industry, Mr. Shishir
Jaipuria, Managing Director, Ginni Filaments Ltd.
and Chairman of the session said that a lot of
breakthrough innovations in the field of IT, biotech,
pharmaceuticals etc have been seen lately. These,
he said, have now spread to sectors like engineering,
chemicals and textiles. Whereas traditional textiles
were confined to apparel and clothing, technical
textiles encompassed every field of human activity
and goods.
Technical
textiles are cost effective, durable, strong,
versatile, user friendly, eco friendly and convenient.
The global consumption of technical textiles is
likely to grow to 127 billion dollars by the year
2010 with an average growth rate of 4.8%. Whereas
the major producers of technical textiles were
USA, Europe and Japan, the coming years could
see China and India picking up. The global consumption
of fibres for technical textiles was 14 million
tons in 1995, which was projected to reach 24
million tons by the year 2010.
Mr.
Hendrik van Delden, Managing Director, Gherzi
van Delden GmbH, said that his company has a large
business in India and was also doing management
consulting in the developed markets in Europe
as well as in Asia. The company had done a lot
of work in the technical textiles sector like
automotive, non-wovens and technical wovens, functional
apparel etc. According the Gherzi, the next ten
years would be marked by the growth of technical
textiles and Asia, including India would participate
in this growth.
Talking
about products and technologies, Mr. Delden said
that non-wovens show the highest growth rate.
It was not possible to produce a fabric type structure
cheaply in wovens or in knits as was possible
in non-wovens. In the world, non-wovens represented
24% of the technical textile production while
in India it constitutes only 12%. This showed
a possibility for growth. In India, the major
bottleneck was the availability of fibres at a
competitive cost. Some key raw materials, notably
in synthetics are imported. According to him,
what Reiter was producing in Europe, it was possible
to produce competitively in India. Also, there
were products and applications that could be served
with raw materials that were available in India.
Mr. Didier Vulliet, Managing Director of Rieter
Perfojet spoke on non-wovens and introduced Rieter
products, and reviewed major processes which cover
the non-woven business. The share of non-woven
in the automotive sector was small in terms of
production but large in terms of annual growth.
Raw material and freight were the key part of
the total cost of the end product. |
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