What is technicaltextiles

India produces Technical Texiles and they lie unnoticed in various locations all around our various states and Union Teritories.At present we can say they are in an unorganized sector working under private management with out any support from the govt or research institutes for their technical support.These units managed by the private parties with out public participation depend mostly on trained technical staff from the machinery suppliers and skilled Indian labour.

At a major International Textile Exibition,Technical Textiles was launched in the year 1985 to reflect the growth of Technical Textiles and soon it devoloped in to a simple taxonomy that has been used eversince to describe the scope of this new industry and market sector.

In the year 2008 Govt of India became aware of this industry's growth year after year and allowed Textile Research Associations to help them in testing their products.Under this Govt sponsored scheme the testing of Medical Textiles

will be done at

South India Textile Research Association at Coimbatore.

The testing of Geo Textiles will be done at The Bombay Textile Research Association.

The testing of Pro-tech will be done at North India Textile Research Association

and the testing of

Agro Tech will be done at

Silk & Art Silk Mills Research Association.

The testing Machines,Instruments and other equipment costing hundreds of crores are now perhaps are fully functional and are used by the Technical Textile Industries.The need for a survey is perhaps needed to ensure that the public tax payers money is fully utilized.

Textile Technology Undergraduate,graduate,Masters and PhD, Diploma and degrees are awarded by the Textile Schools/Institutes and Universities in Textile Technology / Manufacture.

There is not a single School/Institute or University which has the infrastructure to award a undergraduate diploma or degree in Technical Textiles in our country at present.The reason being no plan by the Govt of India or the Technical Textile Industries.To set up a college and research university with hands on experience in the college itself which is of atmost importance needs hundreds of crores of Rs and it is not a viable proposal for a private investor,our Govt has no proposals under any ministry.Even the Textile Ministry has not shown any worth while interest in this Sun Shine Industry,the future in non apparel textiles having tremendous scope in exports.

In India we do have several Technical Textile Industries manufacturing several divisions of this Industry such as:-

1) Geo Textiles - Mostly non wovens which needs less of everything and gives more production in many varaities for several uses in any of the industry in Geo Engineering,Geo Synthetics,Geo Grids,Geo Synthetic Clay Liners and Geo Composites.

2) Home Textiles - Bed Spreads and Bed Linen,Towels,Napkins,Table Covers,Furnishings,Cushion Covers,Curtains and Window Dressings.

3) Industrial Yarns - Sewing Threads,Tyre Cords,Nets,Ropes ctc..

4) Medical Textiles - Mostly Baby Diapers

5) Packtech - Various packing materials now made more eco friendly.

6) Protech - These are mostly property covers made use in construction.Transport,WareHouse and water proof covers.

7)Cloth Tech - Mostly Shoe Linings and Shoe Components.

There are literally hundreds of products in Technical Textiles that are not made in India.Even what is made in India is labeled as made in some other country.

The Economic Importance of Technical Textiles.

Traditional textiles have undergone major technological changes as for example in good old non woven fabrics which entered our country in the 60's has gone to unexpected technological changes and innovations that was never thought of in the 60's.

For example another area is Tyre Cord,Fish Net,Sewing Thread and Ropes from Cotton Hard Waste these were never in the category of Technical Textiles in the early 60's and the performance of these products were just as they went and no performance criteria was attached to these items.The automotive industry for example started with performance of Tyres as competition grow with new company's entering this segment.After Tyre Cord it was sewing thread which went on to demand a thread strong enough to demand performance at super high speeds driven by electric motors controlled by computer programming.The the Fishing nets which went in to deep sea to catch high volume of fish to make up less trips for the day and more fish for the market.Year after year raising cots and quality conscious customers demanded much better off the shelf goods.Machinery manufacturers were left with no alternative but boost their R & D to satisfy the Industry.So textiles went in to more of technical performance.Machines were made to manufacture knot less yarn with zero defects.

Consumers started enquiring on technology of product manufacturing,tested their goods in house and wanted to know the raw materials used in manufacture.Sellers market turned to buyers market.There were no more first sort and second sorts.Quality at any cost ruled for several products.Anything goes went out of sellers lips.Thus a New Era in Textile Industry was shaping up to flood the industrialists with dream machines standing next door.The Textile Industry now started getting a sickness label and soon it was epidemic where the tough started getting to grow and the weak soon downed their shutters.The mills which were managed scientifically and having good technical background were prepared for this drastic input cost in the manufacture of their products and had upgraded their mills with most modern high speed machines and had even started few products in Technical Textiles.The well planed production programmes brought down their input costs and they survived in crisis and went on to explore the profit making technical textiles,which further helped them to firmly set their market.

Technical Textiles in India was major industry but was known as Cotton Textile Mills.There were more than 2,000 cotton textile mills.Unfortunately most of these mills were unscientifically managed,there were no textile technocrats as advisors,no research and development everything was family of the owners of these mills who did everything from raw materials purchase to marketing from employee relations to customer relations were all by father and son who took the final decision. Those were the days up to the emergence of chemical fibers that these textile mills were blind to technical textile products which were made in the India not by chemical fibers but by king cotton as industrial yarns and umbrala cloth to wound bandages to tarpaulins. Similarly Silk,Wool, Jute as ropes of every size and length from machines as well as by hand used in construction industry for lifting and other than sheep,animal fibers were technical fibers.Silk was a insulation material in electrical wires,Camel hair was used in brushes used by painters. The textile mills that never bothered on the future of their enterprise slowly started going down performing in their production and profits due to competition from unorganized sector powerlooms who under govt protection undersold apperal fabrics and took on giants of textile industry and made them shut their huge gates even when Government took over these over 110 textile mills more than 50 of these took over mills had to be closed due to bad machinery condition and govt unable to get experts in the industry to run these mills or plan to organize them to modernizing and diversifying production to manufacture future generation fabrics which China was exporting to India.Technical Textile materials.Thanks to those entrapruners in private sector who had highly qualified textile expert's who turned their high volume low cost production apperal fabrics to high volume and high cost,high profit industrial and technical textiles as Industrial textile products.