Abstract
While early commentators predicted major breakthroughs from nanotechnologies
in fields such a medicine and electronics, the textiles industry has been one
of the initial adopters of nanotechnology products and processes.
The innovations seen in the textile industry includes both innovations i.e.
the development of recent products to deal with present consumer demand, or
process innovation which leads to lesser unit costs, larger capacity and
better quality. In the near future, the key opening for nanotechnology in the
textiles industry is in product innovation, not process innovation.
In the textile industry, nanotechnologies are more likely to be employed to
produce new materials, or improve the properties of existing materials, than
to trim down the production cost or improve quality. Although still in its
infancy, nanotechnology is already demonstrating to be a helpful tool in
improving the performance of textiles, added value and additional revenue.
Smaller player will find it hard to adopt new technologies due to tight
margins and cost of switching. Larger textile conglomerates with multiple
product sectors are better place to be winners. Highest growth opportunities
(or rate of adoption) will be in technical textiles and non-cost sensitive
products such as sport or military textiles. Barriers are high for the
clothing market, which makes up 60% of the market. Nanotechnology will provide
incremental improvements to exiting textile sectors, bit offer high growth in
non-conventional sectors.
The market for textiles making use of nanotechnologies will reach US $13.6
billion by 2007, climbing dramatically to reach US $115 billion by 2012.
Highest growth rates will be seen outside the traditional apparel and home
applications, where demand for performance improvements rather than cost
reduction will drive the rapid adoption of nanotechnologies. The current world
market for textiles is broken down by sector as shown in Exhibit 1. However,
not all markets will be equally affected by nanotechnology with
non-cost-sensitive applications such as military and sports textiles showing
the highest growth.
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