29 November 2010 – The Ministry of Textiles is set to launch the Technology Mission on Technical Textiles. It has sent the Rs 200 crore Mission proposal to the Finance Ministry whose approval is expected soon, Ms. Rita Menon, Secretary, Ministry of Textiles, has announced. Inaugurating the FICCI-Ministry of Textiles ‘National Conference on Stimulating Investments in Technical Textiles: Meditech & Geotech’, Ms. Menon said “The Technology Mission would have two Mini Missions for providing infrastructure support for manufacture of technical textiles and market development support to the technical textile manufacturers”.
The Technology Mission, she said, would go a long way in unleashing investments in the technical textiles industry. The Mission would address the problems faced by the industry in terms of lack of basic infrastructure, technology, skilled manpower, R&D support, training facilities and laying down of regulations.
Technical textiles industry players see a huge potential for the growth of this sector, most of whom have finalized their investment plans. Welspun India Ltd. is setting up a new project for speciality products with an investment of Rs. 125 crore at Anjar in the Kutch district of Gujarat. The project would employ 100 people and is expected to go on stream by end-December 2011.
Likewise, Alok Industries Ltd. has firmed up its plans to invest close to Rs 200 crore in technical textiles manufacture. The National Textiles Corporation (NTC) has decided to invest Rs 160 crore in a geotech project in Rajasthan and Rs 60 crore in a meditech project in Tamil Nadu. Companies such as S Kumars Nationwide Ltd., Gokak Textiles Ltd., 3 M and Maccaferri Environmental Soultions Pvt. Ltd. see tremendous scope for the geotech and meditech industry as the geotech sector had the potential to grow nearly by 30 times in the next 10 years and the healthcare industry is projected to grow from US$ 40 billion to US$ 80 billion in the next five years.
Ms. Menon said that the Textile Ministry proposes to set up four new Centres of Excellence (CoE) for Nonwovens, Composites, Indutech and Sportech to support the manufacturers of technical textiles of the respective segment. She informed the delegates that the existing CoEs–for Geotech, Meditech, Protech and Agrotech–will be beefed up by providing additional facilities to the industry by way of testing and evaluation of products, Resource Centre with IT infrastructure, indigenous development of prototypes, training of core personnel and regular training of personnel form the technical textile industry.
Ms. Menon said that to promote investments, the CoEs would be developed as incubation centres for the products of their segment and would provide the necessary facilities to the entrepreneurs for the incubation of new ideas and technologies. In this context, she sought the support of the private sector in initiating the government’s incubation efforts.
She said that to bring about the required regulatory changes, the Ministry of Textiles has obtained the nominations of the representatives of the user ministries — Health & Family Welfare, Home Affairs, Road Transport & Highways, Agriculture and Defence — to take up the issues relating to regulations for the technical textiles sector.
To support ‘business start-up’ for SMEs, the CoEs, other institutes and independent consultants would be empanelled by the Ministry of Textiles and the Textile Commissioner’s office who will prepare project reports and handhold the potential entrepreneurs till the completion of the projects, Ms. Menon pointed out.
The inaugural session of the conference was alos addressed by Mr. Sujit Gulati, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Textiles; Mr. A B Joshi, Textile Commissioner, Government of India; and Mr. Shishir Jaipuria, Chairman, FICCI Task Force on Textiles & Technical Textiles & MD, Ginni Filaments.
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