Commodity Online
The future is bright for India’s nonwovens and technical textiles sector on rising middle income population who will fuel the domestic consumption of products such as hygiene and feminine care. This will be one of the drivers for growth for the nonwovens and technical textiles (NWTT) industry in India, according to Seshadri Ramkumar, Associate Professor of Non-wovens and technical textiles at Texas Tech University, USA.

In an article in Nonwovens Industry, the leading industry magazine, he quoted the Asian Development Bank (ADB)latest report, “The Asian Development Outlook 2010,” that has stated that the strong domestic consumption and the growing investments will put India’s economy in the growth trajectory. ADB emphasizes the importance of domestic consumption and infrastructural investments on the growth of Indian economy, meaning more opportunities for the technical textiles industry.

Ramkumar further said that the government and the industry are looking for diversification opportunities to enlarge the overall market size of the Indian textiles industry. India textiles industry wants to reach the size of US $ 115 billion by 2012. The expectation is that the technical textiles sector will contribute at least 10% to the overall market size, which will be US $ 11.5 billion. The current value of the Indian technical textiles sector is around US $8 billion. This means, India’s technical textiles sector has to nearly double in size in years ahead. All stake holders, i.e., industry and trade associations, Government, industry related trade associations and textile academia and working seriously to build a viable technical textiles sector in India.

Technical textiles sector is classified into three: 1) Consumer Products; 2) Institutional Products and 3) Government Procurement Products. Consumer products include personal care, baby care and hygiene products. In this category, global brands such as Huggies and Pampers have penetrated into the market. Major players are P&G, Kimberly-Clark, SCA-Godrej and Johnson and Johnson. Products from these major international companies are predominantly sold in pharmacies and retails stores such as Birla’s More and Big Bazaars. The consumers that use these products are predominantly middle-income, upper middle class and those from the upper strata of the society.

The cost and the lack of awareness prohibit the penetration of these products into the rural and low income areas. There will be growth in the consumption of institutional products such as geotextiles, automotive textiles and hospital products. India has a plan to build 20 kilometers of national highway per day which will Lead to more consumption of technical textiles products. Government procurement category also offers scope as the Ministry of Defense, Government of India has recently streamlined its procurement policies. Those countries that have quality defense textiles products and liaison bodies in India will have advantages over the others.

India’s Nonwoven Technical Textiles sector would grow at double digits while the Texas Tech team had predicted 13% back in 2008. An India government sponsored market study by ICRA has put the growth rate for this sector at 11%, Seshadri Ramkumar said in his article.

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