International Textile

Non woven textile market an introduction

Non-wovens are defined as flat structured fabrics, such as sheets or webs, not made by weaving but by bonding and entangling fibers by means of mechanical, thermal or chemical processes. The major non-woven technologies now available, are needle-punching, thermal-bonding, air laid, spun-bonding, melt blowing and spun lacing/ hydro-entanglement. The non-woven materials produced under these processes are extensively used for technical applications such as surgical gowns, diaper cover stocks, automotive linings, and military applications such as decontamination wipes and geo-textiles such as insulating tank/lake bunds. India, firmly well-established in commodity textiles such as apparels/made-ups at the rear of its tough cotton economy, has to promote itself into high-value products such as technical textiles/non-wovens. Non-woven textiles inside the overall technical textiles is likely to grow globally at an average 8 per cent, with the Asia-Pacific region being expected to show a vigorous 9.6 per cent annual escalation rate between 2006 and 2009. The world production of non-wovens elevated from 2.16 million tones in 1994 to 4.43 million tones in 2004 with a probable value jump from $9 billion to $15.9 billion, correspondingly, during this period. Europe and North America, which had the lion's share of 1.35 million tones and 1.16 million tones, respectively, in 2004 world production figure of 4.43 million tones, may give way to the Asia-Pacific region, which is projected to increase its non-woven products productivity from 1.02 million tones in 2004 to 1.67 million tones by 2009. At present, the total volume of non-wovens produced from India is estimated at 35,000 tones, as compared to China's non-woven product output of 7.55 lakh tones (China is a dominating force in non-wovens among the Asia-Pacific region and the third largest non-woven producing region after America and Europe because of life-style changes, the rising middle-class, and its economy).