New Delhi: Ministry of Textiles has approved 18 R&D projects worth Rs. 46.74 crore across key strategic areas of Geotech, Protech, Indutech, Sustainable Textiles, Sportech, Smart E-Textiles, Meditech segments during the 7th meeting of Mission Steering Group (MSG) of National Technical Textiles Mission Thursday in New Delhi.
Chairing the meeting Union Minister Piyush Goyal emphasized that Industry and Institute’s pro-active and robust engagement was essential for the indigenous development of technical textiles in India
Among these 18 R&D projects, 14 are high value Projects, 3 are Prototype Grant projects and 1 is Ideation Grant project. The projects cover different application areas of technical textiles including 1 Projects from Geotech, 2 of Protech, 2 Indutech, 2 Sportech, 5 Sustainable Textiles, 3 Meditech, 3 Smart & E Textiles and 1 Geotextiles were approved. The approved projects were led by institutes and research bodies including BTRA, ATIRA, IIT Delhi, IIT Jammu, NIT Jalandhar, IIT Kharagpur, CSIR New Delhi, IIT Madras, among others.
Union Minister reviewed the progress of different components of National Technical Textiles Mission including review of sanctioned R&D products, R&D projects in Mission mode, Formation of a committee for Startups in Technical Textiles under GREAT Guidelines, Outreach activities and events including 6th Edition of MOT-FICCI-BIS National conclave on Standards & Regulations and Meditex conference in July and September 2023, respectively.
Emphasis should be on R&D for globally highly imported technical textiles items, apart from import-dependent technical textiles items and specialty fibres in India, he further added.
Besides, the progress on the education, training & skill development front was also reviewed by the Union Minister wherein 26 applications from 15 Public and 11 Private institutes valuing Rs. 151.02 crore were approved for introducing papers, procuring laboratory infrastructure and training of trainers across different application areas of technical textiles.