Steps to establish textile city in Chennai underway: Stalin

CHENNAI: Chief Minister MK Stalin on Friday announced that the State government is in the process of establishing a textile city in Chennai. He chaired the first International Conference on Technical Textiles organised by the Department of Textiles of the state government in association with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Ministry of Textiles of the Union government.

"The State government is in the process of establishing a world-class mega textile city in Chennai. We have also planned to establish a handloom museum in Mahabalipuram at the cost of Rs 30 crore and to establish a state-of-the-art design and incubation centre. We have also expedited the work of establishing export hubs in Karur, Tirupur and Kancheepuram to increase the export of textiles manifolds," said Stalin, in the conference.

The Chief Minister also said that the State government has taken necessary steps for the creation of a new integrated textile policy, to acquire land through SIPCOT to develop a mega textile park spread over 1,500 acres in Kumaralingapuram village in Virudhunagar district, initiated an action plan to procure new machineries and for modernisation at an estimated Rs 29.34 crore, and is in the process of establishing mini textile parks with the subsidy of Rs 2.5 crore.

The Chief Minister further said that technical textiles is a fast growing field and the state government is giving priority to the sector. The State government will provide all required support for the establishment of technical textiles for manufacturing sportswear, defence outfits, protective gears used in industries, life saving dresses used in the medical field and airbags and seat belts used in automobiles.

Six Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) were exchanged with companies based out of the US, the Czech Republic and Japan with companies in Tamil Nadu in the field of technical textile production and textile processing. The MoU’s exchanged were on recovery of chemicals from wastewater in common effluent treatment, higher energy savings solutions for pumps applications in common effluent treatment plants, reduction of water consumption in the textile processing industry and pollution to the environment, production, and sales activities of Meditech products and technical knowledge and investment of Japanese textile industries.

Minister for Industries Thangam Thennarasu, Handlooms and Textiles Minister R Gandhi, MSME Minister TM Anbarasan, Rajeev Saxena, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Textiles of the Union government, Dharmendra Pratap Yadav, Secretary of Handlooms, Handicrafts, Textiles and Khadi department of the state government and M Vallalar, state Commissioner of Textiles participated in the conference.