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The
Chairman of the session Shri Sanjay Jayavarthanavelu,
Whole Time Director, Lakshmi machine Works, elaborated
on India’s emergence as a dominant force
in the global textile scenario with adequate raw
material, skilled manpower, a good capable market
to support the expansions and a great entrepreneurial
spirit. In the ever-competitive textile business,
technology would be the main driving force, technology
that would address areas in environment, energy
efficiency and deliver greater value to the customer.
In his presentation, Mr. Manikam Ramaswami, Chairman,
Loyal Textile Mills, stressed on the need for
research and development. He called for a complete
re-look at the way R&D is being done. European
manufactures should do a part of their R&D
in India and China, as has been the case in pharmaceuticals,
software, microprocessors and auto industry. The
time taken for re-invention and producing reverse
engineering machines is getting shorter and products
are getting closer to the original in terms of
performance. This should serve as a wake up call
and motivate the inventive manufactures of textile
machinery to relocate and have a level playing
field so that they could also have lower cost
of research and manufacturing. Indian manufacturers,
according to him, should set up genuine R&D
centres, take advantage of relocation of the textile
industry, recruit good technologists with good
R&D experience from Europe to work in their
R&D centres, sponsor projects of proven research
institutions and teaching institutions in Europe,
look at acquiring companies with good R&D
track record, and above all trust the Indian user
industry and research institutions and work together
in a commercially viable way to develop and test
new designs and inventions.
Mr.
Johan Verstraete, Picanol, Belgium spoke on the
weaving technology. With 50000 units a year, China
was the biggest investor on weaving machines in
Asia. However, over the last 18 months, Pakistan,
India and Bangladesh have also been investing
heavily. He elaborated on the premium products
that his company offered. Discussing the market
requirements, he said that whereas European market
gives premium to flexibility, short run, fast
reaction time, etc, Asian markets look at cost
competitiveness in terms of power consumption
or manpower and raw material requirements. This
gap has to be bridged, he said.
Speaking
on the Spinning Technology, Mrs. Edda Walraf,
Head Marketing, Rieter Textile Systems, Germany,
summed the production order as Invention in Europe,
manufacturing in China, and selling in America.
After the quotas the focus would be on supplying
countries, on countries with good infrastructure
and low-level cost. Also, the exchange rates would
play an important role and this would influence
the company’s business. The national and
international development projects would influence
where the labour and manufacturing units would
be placed. State interventions by tariffs, subsidies
and import restriction would also play a role.
Rieter, she said, was trying to look into all
these aspects because it was believed that only
if the entire production, manufacturing and selling
of the customers and their marketing were understood,
the company could supply successfully. On their
product lines, she said that Reiter had machines
that produce spun yarns, filaments and non-woven.
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