India to have four new textile centres
The Indian government has announced that four centres of excellence will be set up soon for specialised textiles with a total investment of approximately $21.9 million.
“Four new Centres of Excellence (CoE) for composites, non-woven and sports tech segments will be set up with a government funding of $5.48 million each,” Textiles Secretary Rita Menon said.
The centres will provide testing, standardisation and research facilities at for manufacturers.
The Textiles Ministry has asked research associations to join hands with an industry partner for the setting up of these facilities.
After launching the Technical Textiles Technology Mission (TMTT), Ms Menon said the existing four CoEs would also be upgraded.
To address the issues of lack of infrastructure and absence of standardisation in the industry, the government launched TMTT with two mini-missions for a period of five years, with a fund outlay of $43.9 million.
The objective of the so-called ‘Mini-Mission I’ is standardisation, creating common facilities and infrastructure support, while ‘Mini-Mission II’ will focus on extending support for domestic and export market development.
Currently, the market size of Indian technical textile industry is estimated at $9.4 billion.
The Textiles Ministry expects the sector to grow at over 11% annually and touch $16 billion by 2012-13.
