The Hindu Business Line : Textile machinery imports from Korea on the rise

THE burgeoning capital goods imports by the textile industry to meet the growing business opportunity in the quota-free trade environment is reflected in the rise of imports of textile machinery from Korea in the last two years. But most of this volume is made through the used machinery import route.

The textile machinery import which stood at $40 million in 2003-04 has gone up by 25 per cent to $50 million by 2004-05 fiscal, according to the officials from the Korea Trade Centre (Kotra), the overseas arm of the Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency which looks after the in and out-bound Korean trade/investment promotion.

A strong player in synthetic textile machinery and also in textile finishing-line including dyeing equipment, garmenting and embroidery machinery, Korean textile majors have cast their eyes on the Indian market which is anticipated to widen its textile machinery offtake with the demand on the Indian producers to scale up the content of value addition in their manufacture in terms of quality and fabric innovation, said Mr In-Taeg Lim, Director General of Kotra. Mr Lim who was here as part of a team of representatives of Korean textile machinery industry under the aegis of the Korea Textile Machinery Association (KOTMA) for a trade facilitation meeting with the local textile industry told Business Line that the imports of Korean machinery into India this year would be even higher than the 2004-05 levels.

India's import of embroidery machinery, one of the high-demand items in Korea's textile machinery export basket, which was at $3 million in 2003-04 continued to thrive through 2004-05 and as per the figures available for the first eight months of the fiscal, the value of the import of Korean embroidery units had gone beyond $3.3 million. "With emphasis on quality fabrics gaining, we look at the weaving machinery as the future demand machinery item from India," said Mr Lim.

To a specific query on the competitiveness of China's textile machinery sector as seen by India vis-à-vis the Korean machinery, Mr Yong Hyun Chang, the KOTMA Chairman, said that one of the reasons for the `invisibility' of Korean machinery in India might be the higher volume of imports of second hand machinery by India including those from Korea. The other factor is China's machinery is cheaper, although the offering would not be great in terms of technology. "Korea can't sustain by producing low-level technology machinery. Whereas, China's textile industry continues to import high-end textile machinery from Korea," Mr Chang added.

The KOTMA-affiliated industry representatives, who early this week participated in a similar interface with Surat-based textile industry for trade promotion, hope to explore the possibility of setting up joint ventures/dealership arrangement for total machinery or accessories supplies to Indian market. Two of KOTMA member industries — Seobu Machinery and Textech — are at present involved in knowhow transfer in manufacture of water jet and dobby component with the Gujarat-based Himson. "This is the first step in promoting Korea's textile machinery activity and we are testing the Indian market before we could go ahead with our plans. We did the same think when we decided to get into investing in China's textile machinery market," Mr Chang said, adding that Korea's a total investment in China's textile machinery sector worked out to some $100 million.

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