INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON TECHNICAL TEXTILES NOVEMBER 11-12,2006

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Background of the Seminar

Technical textiles comprise a diverse range of manufacturing activities tied to broad end-use markets. The industry embraces products ranging from the mundane, such as wiping cloths to the spectacular products such as heart valves, aerospace composites and architectural fabrics. The supply chain that connects fiber producers with end-use markets is a long and complex one. It embraces big and small companies, from fiber producers through yarn and fabric manufacturers, finishers, converters, and fabricators who incorporate technical textiles into their own products or use them as an essential part of their business operations.

Technical textiles account for over one-quarter of all textile consumption in weight terms. The outlook for technical applications is far more positive than for most other fibre, textile and clothing markets. The global textile industry, the first one to mechanize itself in the era of industrial revolution, is worth $250 billion today. The usage of technical textile materials in the industries around the world is growing substantially, offering a lucrative business opportunity.

According to a study conducted by David Rigby Associates, in many developed countries like USA and Japan, technical textiles account for over 35 per cent of the textile industry output. For developing countries, such as China, the share is well over 19 per cent, but in India, it is only five per cent. The study report also highlights that the real engine of world growth in the end-use consumption lies in Asia and " the fastest growth prospects appear to lie with entirely new markets such as India and other emergent Asian economies ". Considering the severe competition emerging in the world markets, it is time for India to exploit the full market potential for functional and technical textiles.

Objectives of the Conference

The main objective of the conference is to bring together the industry, research organizations and academia involved in the field of technical textiles and have meaningful discussions on the existing technical textile products, new product development possibilities, domestic and global market potentials for these products and finally to come up with suitable strategy for the development of technical textiles in India. This is expected to be beneficial for the industries which are looking forward to take advantage of the opened up global market and the research organizations and academic institutions to identify the areas to concentrate their R&D efforts and develop appropriate technology and products.

The areas of the papers to be presented and discussed will be on design aspects and manufacturing technologies for various functional and technical textile products including technical yarns, woven, knitted, braided and nonwovens products. Application areas would include agrotech, buildtech, clothtech, geotech, hometech, indutech, medtech, mobiltech, oekotech, packtech, protech and sporttech.