The Northern India Textile Research Association (NITRA) recently organised Tech-Tex 2019, a one-day conference on protective and automotive textiles. The conference was organised on the next day of the 58th Joint Technological Conference (JTC), an annual feature of India’s four premier textiles research associations (TRAs) viz ATIRA, BTRA, SITRA and NITRA.

In his welcome address, NITRA director general Dr. Arindam Basu spoke about the scope and potential of emerging technical textiles industry and informed that NITRA has already started working in that direction and is presently a Centre of Excellence (CoE) for protective & automotive textiles. He said that NITRA scientists have come up with many innovative products in this domain such as military and paramilitary uniforms from NYCO, cut resistant gloves from composite metallic yarn, and development of fabric for stab resistant vest, to name a few.

Learned speakers from the Indian Army, ITBP, CRPF, BIS, SMPP (P) Ltd, RSWM, and Marvel Vinyls Ltd presented very informative and resourceful papers at the event. Amongst the TRAs, SITRA and host NITRA also presented one paper each. The conference, thus, set a new benchmark for research in technical textiles in India.

Before the technical presentations of Tech-Tex began, four latest publications of NITRA, and Hindi version of Textile & Apparel Booklet, known as TABlet series in the industry, was released. (RKS)