Pakistan’s textile industry wooed by technology

Exhibition provides opportunity to learn new inventions, processing techniques

FRANKFURT: Apart from traditional products being exported to European countries, Pakistan’s textile industry is looking to produce smart technology-based material to meet growing demand in lucrative markets in the west.

With the help of European technique firms, Pakistani companies in textile sector will be using modern technologies to produce value-added products like solar energy harvesting tents and other tailor-able textile devices.

According to Salman Zulfiqar Ali, deputy general marketing of Spire Fitting Mills, exhibitions of textile products at Messe Frankfurt are providing an opportunity to know new inventions, processing techniques and new materials being introduced in the world under one roof.

“Though the suppliers of new processing and technique devices usually visit Pakistan, at the international exhibition we can directly talk to experts of such technologies,” he said.

Ali said that textile product of Pakistan is usually sold out at $2 to 2.5 per meter in European markets but with the application of new techniques and subsequent production as per the demand of valuable markets the same product may fetch $8 to 15 per meter.

Mahrooz Textile Industry CEO Mian Muhammad Shahid, who was attending the show for the first time, said that his company has been supplying tents to Middle Eastern countries but now it has decided to focus on European countries.

To tap the lucrative markets, his company has also decided to make joint ventures with technique firms in EU. “With the help a French company we will be producing solar harvesting tents in Pakistan,” he said, adding that technology-based tents and cloths would also protect agricultural products from weather hazards.

With 312 exhibitors from 36 countries and a growth rate of 14%, Techtextil, Texprocess, the leading international trade fair for the processing of textile and flexible materials in Frankfurt had showcased, for the fourth time, all the stages of the value creation train in the textile industry.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 14^th, 2017.

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