Asia’s technical textiles market has been playing an important role in the world economic growth. In 2012, global industrial textiles sales approximated to US$129 billion, a 2.5% increase compared to 2011, among which Asia accounted for 45% of the total, with China, India, South Korea and other developing countries growing much faster than the rest of the world. Although the international industrial market slowed down significantly in 2013, many analysts believe that a moderate slowdown was healthy and helpful to ease the economic inflation, and benefit the future development of the industry.

Low-end products account for 67% of technical textiles market in India, which means only one-third of the output could be categorized as high-end. As Indian technical textiles and nonwovens industries are still in their infancy, compared with the U.S., Europe and China, those advanced technologies are less developed in this market. Meanwhile, the recent decline in consumer spending and global economic downturn both forced the Indian textile industry to seriously consider its future. Currently, the Indian government and the industry are taking measures to expand its overall market size.

India’s industrial textiles sector produces about $800 million per year and the government hopes it will increase to $1.55 billion by the end of 2014, which will translate into about 50% growth. All stakeholders, including trade associations, government, industry associations and textile academia are joining forces to strenuously establish a viable industrial textiles sector.

Enormous potential
India’s textiles industry is now entering into a rapid development stage with huge market potential ahead. According to the analysis released by INDA, Indian geotextiles, wipes, sanitary napkins and baby diapers are advancing at 23%, 12.8%, 20% and 5.6% growth rate respectively, demonstrating a huge potential for the nonwovens industry in India. Its government also attaches great importance to the development of industrial textiles industry, and is scheduled to invest half a billion rupees to promote its growth.

Currently, the consumption of nonwovens per capita in India is below 100 grams, while in developed countries such as the U.S. and Western Europe, it is 3 kg to 3.5 kg. Although India only accounts for a small portion of global nonwoven production, following the rising demand of global industrial textiles, the emergence of new applications and new markets, India is undoubtedly a thriving market. If the government formulates policies to support domestic products development, it might speed up nonwovens industry growth within two or three years. While government is strengthening its leadership, industry insiders are also making efforts to promote the popularity and perception of the industry as well, for instance, by organizing exhibitions to showcase the latest products and equipment, to help finding innovative solutions to boost business growth, and providing proper guidance for entrepreneurs to make right investments.

Clarify product categories
For an emerging market such as India, Anil Joshi, textile commissioner from the Indian Textile Ministry, proposed classification of technical textiles sector into i.e., consumer products, institutional products and government procurement products.
Consumer products include personal care, baby care and hygiene products. In this category, global brands, such as Curiosity and Pampers have been well established in the market. Leading players such as P&G, Kimberly-Clark, SCA-Godrej and Johnson & Johnson are dominating the market share. Their products are mainly sold in pharmacies or retail stores, for example, Birlas Grand Bazaar. However, consumers of these products are basically above the middle-income level. Lack of cost consciousness prevents these products from penetrating into rural and low-income areas.

The consumption of institutional products is expected to increase, such as geotextiles, automotive textiles and medical textiles. India will build 20 kms of national freeway, resulting in more consumption of technical textiles.
Government procurement category refers to products offered to Department of Defense and various liaison agencies, the majority of which relies on imports, however.

Latest investments
Today, India’s nonwovens industry is developing under the spotlight, industry observers are closely looking at the Asian giant, and estimate it will become an important force of the global nonwovens industry in the near future. Many leading companies from North America and Europe choose India to establish their new plants.

Precot, a renowned German manufacturer of nonwoven end products has launched a nonwoven fabric manufacturing facility in Karnataka, the southern Indian state for healthcare products. Ashok Kulkarni, Precot’s CEO responsible for the new business said that the new project will be an integrated facility and will not only house nonwovens production lines and finishing machines, but also will incorporate facilities for end products.

As the world’s largest consumer products manufacturer, P&G has disclosed plans to manufacture products for the Indian market in an attempt to provide more affordable products for the growing population. P&G also plans to invest over $1 billion in the next five years, to localize the previous imports and sales of diapers business in India.

Japanese manufacturer Unicharm, which established its first Indian disposable diaper factory in 2010, is now stepping up its business expansion in India. In fiscal 2014, its second plant in Chennai will be put into operation, expecting to double sales in India by 2015, reaching 10 billion yen, a two-fold increase of production capacity of its baby diapers and hygiene products.

In addition, SCA will invest about 150 million krona to produce nonwovens-based hygiene products in India. The hygiene products include Tena incontinence pads, Tork feminine care products, Libero baby diapers and Tempo toilet paper. The location of the investment is in southwestern India. The new SCA plant is scheduled to come onstream in 2015.

In an activity jointly organized by Indian Ministry of Textiles, trade institutions and the Federation of Indian Commerce and Industry in New Delhi, Textile Secretary Rita Menon announced that the government will invest $45 million in an industrial textiles “Five Year Plan” (2013 – 2017), to accelerate the development of new nonwoven products and specialty textiles.

This includes two potential objectives. One is to establish four new centers of excellence, designated to strengthen India’s domestic R&D capabilities, i.e. nonwoven textiles, composites, industrial technology (indutech) and sports technology (sportech). Each center will be granted $5.45 million. The other objective is to foster domestic consumption and increase export opportunities.

The challenges
As technical textiles are mostly fast moving consumer goods in India, affordable price becomes an important reference for merchantability. After all, consumers in less developed regions consider price performance ratio as a key concern. At the same time, the government needs to strengthen the implementation of supporting regulations in related industries, while industrial players should improve products introduction.

Furthermore, the Indian government attaches great importance to the nonwovens industry, an important source for generating foreign currency and second only to agriculture industry in terms of creating employment. In order to support nonwovens and technical textiles development, it is necessary to differentiate from neighboring fiber production countries. While India’s nonwoven and technical fiber production is still in its early stage, its nonwoven industry is expecting changes benefiting the sharp growth in the future.

Way out?
How will India’s industrial textiles industry grow? First, public awareness should be raised so that consumers understand the differences between ordinary textile products and technical textile products. Secondly, through marketing enhancement, technical textile products manufacturers and distributors will know how to sell products efficiently and successfully.

A platform is needed that interested parties and entrepreneurs could use to know what products are good for sale, as well as how to produce and sell them. Put simply, India’s technical textile industry players should better understand where and what are the applications of the technical textiles in daily lives.

India has the essential manufacturing capabilities, which composes the nonwoven industry development base. The Indian government has started to restructure the technical textiles sector, and promote public understanding of technical textiles. Apart from establishing a technical textiles technology department, the government is also working on a plan for technical upgrades after industrial textiles sector reorganization, with an aim to enhance consumers’ awareness.

Just have a close look at products used on a daily basis and one can find lots of opportunities that can be applied by small- and medium-sized enterprises. For example, baby quilts could be stuffed by printed cotton cloth or polyester fiber as filler. Similarly, flame retardant polyester nonwoven materials could also be stuffed in automotive, child car seats and polyester batting.

In addition, the Asia Pacific region has the largest growth rate in the flame retardant protective clothing market, reaching $430 million in 2013. The fast growth is mainly driven by new manufacturing plants and new projects in the Middle East, India, China and Vietnam. Being the two largest populated countries, China and India also have a large number of unprotected industrial workers without protective clothing. This endows the protective clothing market with unlimited growth potential in the future. As Asian manufacturers play a crucial role in the global manufacturing industry, the future demand for protective equipment will only get bigger and bigger.

In conclusion, due to consumption changes in India, the consumer market of nonwoven disposable supplies will continue to expand. Moreover, as the Indian government is reinforcing construction of freeways, bridges and other infrastructure facilities, demand for nonwovens related to civil engineering and industrial fibers is expected to increase dramatically. n