Editorial: India: The Next Major Growth Market for Technical Textiles?

A recent report from Texas Tech University is predicting rapid growth for the technical textile industry in India over the long term. At present, India's technical textile industry is highly fragmented, and at an embryonic stage of its development. Consequently, it poses little or no threat to established players in the industrialised world.

But this seems set for change, according to the authors of the report. By 2012, its output will have grown to the point where it accounts for 10% of global production in value terms. The crucial period, though, will be the 25 years between 2010 and 2035 when forecasts put industry growth at 15% per annum.

Such findings may provide grim reading for players in advanced economies-especially those who have switched from the intensely cost-competitive area of apparel textiles to what they had assumed was the relatively "safe haven" of technical textiles.