Union Minister for Textiles Piyush Goyal on Friday exhorted the textile industry to focus on scale, quality, speed and higher volume to capture world markets.

He was addressing the Keynote Session of ‘Technotex 2023: Envisioning Indian Technical Textiles @2047′, the 10th edition of the International Exhibition and Conference on Technical Textiles, in Mumbai.

“It is time we started looking at the scale and more composite plants, to use more modern technology, thereby also enabling us to meet the needs of large corporate buyers across the world,” he said.

“Many international companies tell me that they are not able to find high-quality high volume suppliers, even though many would prefer to have a relationship with India and work with democracy with transparent rule-based systems,” Goyal said.

The minister went on to say: ”It is time we look at growth, scale and speed. Today is the right time to capture world markets. Our Free Trade Agreements with UAE and Australia came into force last year. We are also working on agreements with other countries including those of the European Union.”

“The direction is to become an international player; no country has become a developed nation without playing an integral role in the global supply chain. We have to integrate our economy with those of the developed countries to reach our potential and the desire of our young population,” he added.

He said that given the vast range of usage for technical textiles, this was the area of the future. “I appeal to startups as well as large corporations to consider expanding rapidly in the technical textiles field. Our share of the global market is about 2.5 per cent; I believe that the Indian market will grow faster than 12 per cent if we are able to showcase its purposes.

Encouraging the participants to be big and bold, the minister shared his belief that India could aim for a $200 billion industry in technical textiles. “The technical textile sector will enable us to find applications in modern technology areas. Technical textiles are going to be used increasingly in ocean ships and in the airline industry as well,” he added.