Textile engineering expo, GTTES-2015 which was held in Mumbai from January 20-22 on an area of 11,500 sq metres, saw over 282 Indian and foreign exhibitors, with a majority of foreign ones coming from China.
Ambassadors and consul generals from 17 countries visited the exhibition, proving the importance of India’s role in the textile sector & the keen interest GTTES generated internationally especially in potential new markets.
Over three days, the trade show also saw visits from high level government officials including from the Ministry of Heavy Industry, Govt. of India and delegates from Sri Lanka, Ethiopia and Korea.
The second day began with a seminar on the Textile Industry Development of Ethiopia conducted by Seleshi Lemma from the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and was attended by various exhibitors.
During the seminar, Seleshi Lemma shared business & textile trade opportunities with Indian textile manufacturers and also proved to be a networking platform for Indian exhibitors to interact with Ethiopian delegates.
According to Lemma, Ethiopia has the second largest population in Africa with 8.5 million people & fourth largest growing economy and that there is an immense growth opportunity for Indian textile industry in Ethiopia.
He added, “After the diversification into new manufacturing commodities, the average annual export growth has reached 27.4 per cent over the last seven consecutive years and is expected to reach close to $4 billion by the end of 2014-2015 fiscal year.”
Extensive marketing has now opened up the African market and machines were purchased by buyers from African countries.
Day 3 began with the visit of Sanjay Porwal, additional chief secretary (Textile) Govt of Maharashtra, who visited each of the exhibition booths. He said that he was happy to see that exhibitors representing all segments of the manufacturing chain from India & China had converged at GTTES 2015.
Updeep Singh, MD at ITEMA India said, “GTTES is an excellent platform for textile manufacturers across India and Indian textile manufacturers have to take the advantage of the Chinese economy slowdown & double their growth in the textile sector.”
GV Aras, Director, Textile Engineering Group at A.T.E said, “A.T.E. has gained several unexpected business proposals from tier II & III city based manufacturers and we are happy to be here at the right time and right place.”
Fritz Legler, VP (Marketing) at Staubli also expressed his views by saying that though the economic slowdown has affected India’s textile industry, he was surprised to see very encouraging footfalls at GTTES & the participation of Chinese exhibitors. (AR)
