National Technical Textiles Mission

• 27 Feb 2020

Why in News

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has approved the setting up of a National Technical Textiles Mission at a total outlay of ₹1,480 crores.

Key Points

• It aims to position the country as a global leader in technical textiles and increase the use of technical textiles in the domestic market.
  
  • The Mission will aim at taking domestic market size to $40 billion to $50 billion by 2024.
• A Mission Directorate will be operational in the Ministry of Textiles.
• It will be implemented for four years starting from 2020-2021 and will have four components-
  
  • First component: It will focus on research, development and innovation with an outlay of ₹1,000 crores.
    
    • The research will be at both fibre level and application-based in geo, agro, medical, sports and mobile textiles and development of bio-degradable technical textiles.
    • Research activities will also focus on the development of indigenous machinery and process equipment.
  • Second component: It will be for the promotion and development of the market for technical textiles.
  • Third component: It will focus on export promotion so that technical textile exports from the country reach from the ₹14,000 crores to ₹20,000 crores by 2021-2022 and ensure 10% average growth every year till the Mission ends.
    
    • An export promotion council for technical textiles will be set up.
  • Fourth component: It will focus on education, training and skill development.
    
    • The Mission will promote technical education at higher engineering and technology levels related to technical textiles and its application areas.
• Data on the Indian Technical Textiles Segment:
  
  • It is estimated at $16 billion which is approximately 6% of the $250 billion global technical textiles market.
  • The penetration level of technical textiles in India varies between 5% and 10% against the level of 30% to 70% in developed countries.

Technical Textiles

• Technical textiles are functional fabrics that have applications across various industries including automobiles, civil engineering and construction, agriculture, healthcare, industrial safety, personal protection etc.
• Based on usage, there are 12 technical textile segments; Agrotech, Meditech, Buildtech, Mobiltech, Clothtech, Oekotech, Geotech, Packtech, Hometech, Protech, Indutech and Sportech.
• For example, ‘mobiltech’ refers to products in vehicles such as seat belts and airbags, airplane seats; geotech, which is incidentally the fastest growing sub-segment, used to hold back soil, etc.

Source: TH