India's acrylic industry set for robust growth

India's growth story has caught the global imagination. This can be seen during the past few years and particularly in the last year.

With all the growth propellers in place, the economy looks all set to take off in a big way. What is further helping the economy to do well is the fact that the government is ensuring that the pace is maintained by taking proactive measures.

All this has resulted in the economy growing at a healthy growth rate of 6-7 per cent and it is expected the pace will continue.

I have highlighted the country's potential growth industries in this newspaper and this time I'm going to cover the acrylics industry.

The Indian acrylic industry has been growing at a healthy pace over the past few years due to a good demand witnessed during the recent past. This industry derives its demand from namely two segments, that is the utility segment and the lifestyle segment. These two segments have witnessed good growth.

Of the two segments the utility segment constitutes about 70 per cent of the market whereas the lifestyle segment constitutes the rest of the market.

Utility segment consists of products like blankets, hosiery and hand-knitting. This segment has been seeing continuous demand from within the country as well as overseas.

The lifestyle segment consists of items like textiles, upholstery, carpeting etc. This segment too has been growing due to good international demand for textiles.

The reason for acrylics doing well is the fact that acrylic fibre has many appealing properties. It has properties such as an ability to dry quickly; softness, excellent colour fastness, luxurious touch and drape, warmth in thermal construction, easy care, resistance to weathering, stain and wrinkle resistant and so on. All these properties have made this fibre very popular.

Another reason why this product has seen a pick up is the fact that the acrylic fibre can be used as a substitute for wool and other fibres such as cotton, polyester and nylon.

Till now, the major demand driver for the acrylic industry was the utility segment but now it has been seen that the lifestyle segment is perking up the demand here.

The reason for the lifestyle segment doing well is due to the rise in demand in textile industry. The Indian textile industry has seen a lot of demand coming in for its products after the lifting of quotas from the beginning of this year. This demand in the textile industry has helped the acrylics industry too and forecasts some really good times.

The writer heads the Dubai office of Karvy Stock Broking Ltd.