Technical textiles are predominantly man-made fibre-based owing to their inherent advantages of strength and versatility. Man-made fibres are estimated to account for around 80% of the total fibre consumption in the global technical textiles.

The majority of technical textiles are manufactured using regular fibres or their specialty variants, whereas, high performance fibres account for a mere 5% of the total fibre consumption. Technical textiles refer to textile materials and products used primarily for their technical performance and functional properties rather than their aesthetic or decorative characteristics.

Today, technical textiles use 25 million tonnes of fibres, accounting for a third of global production. Since 1960, the technical textiles market has increased five times faster than traditional textiles. The nonwovens and composite markets are also set to increase significantly.

The Industry has witnessed a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 3% from 2000 to 2010. Going forward, the major growth areas for technical textiles in the global context are projected to be medical and personal hygiene, sports and leisure, environmental protection, pollution control and filtration, garment and shoe industry.

The primary reason for the success of technical textiles is the innovativeness of woven, knitted and nonwoven fabrics, especially in combination with each other. Another very important aspect for the huge economic potential offered by functional textiles is the great importance given to diversification in research to promote the discovery and implementation of these innovations.

The main target of the technical protective fabrics is to improve people safety in their workplaces. A technical protective fabric can save a worker’s life, that’s why, most of them are mainly used to manufacture PPE (personal protective equipment). There are some organisations around the world (ASTM and ISO) which describe the requirements and regulations, to fulfil by a fabric, to be considered as a technical protective fabric. The aim of a technical protective fabric isn’t fashion, they are designed to have extra values in protection, against some hazards.

The US is the largest consumer of technical textiles, followed by Western Europe and Japan. However, the technical textile industry in the developed world is maturing in a significant way resulting in moderate growth in these economies. In contrast, China, India and other countries in Asia, America and Eastern Europe are expected to experience healthy growth in the near future. Asia is emerging as a powerhouse of both production as well as consumption of technical textiles. China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and India have great potential to make an impact in this industry in the coming decade.

India is emerging as a significant player within the technical textiles market. The fast-paced economic growth leading to infrastructure creation as well as higher disposable income has made India a key market for technical textile products. Moreover, the country has developed a foothold in the production of technical textiles owing to its skilled and technical manpower as well as abundant availability of raw material.

Products being marketed in each sector can be grouped into commodity products, customized products, and niche products. The latter two are the high-value technical textiles, and the development of such products requires significant R&D support (technical textiles is included in the EU and national strategies for R&D funding support) and “know-how” in application of new technologies. Usually, these technical textile products are created in a close relationship between the manufacturer and the customer so as to ensure tailor-made solutions to specific user requirements. So, although the developing economies are major areas of the global market for growth in technical textiles (the potential in India is huge), they do not have as yet the in-depth experience in R&D and innovation management to effectively compete in the high-value end of the market.

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The rapid progress of machine builders, in the development of high-volume commercial production of nanofibres is creating a wealth of new opportunities for such materials.

The latest of which, Chromatographic separation with nanofibres, is itself the subject of a recent posting. Numerous examples of the other applications – including filtration, thermal materials, medical implants, contraception, pain relief, energy storage and generation, chemical protection and lighting – can also be found by searching our archive spanning more than ten years of reporting on technical textiles, smart materials and nanotechnology.

The article also considers one of the barriers to the use of nanofibres: the need for high-volume production techniques.

The signs are encouraging. There is a wealth of research and development aimed at addressing this issue and progress in the last ten years has been nothing short of spectacular; from the first imaginings of a commercial nanofibre to the existence today of several companies selling production machinery. Further progress, however, will open the doors to more opportunities, he argues, not just creating new profit-making opportunities, but also offering the potential to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems, such as the need to provide adequate amounts of clean drinking water for all.

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The goal in all four success strategies is to build stronger relationships with audiences around their most passionate interest areas. Through bolder innovation, media companies can build communities around these interests, serving up the right combination of content and applications to provide real utility to consumers. Just as B2B publishers need to move more closely into their customers’ workflows through a combination of insights, applications, and more valuable data that builds on their existing offerings, consumer publishers need to get deeper into their audiences’ paths to purchase. This will maintain their relevance as consumers spend more time online and embrace the power of the Internet and mobile applications.

In many ways, media executives face the same challenges as ad agencies: The evolving marketing and media ecosystem is placing Darwinian pressure on them to innovate and evolve, or risk becoming extinct. Some will surely rise to this challenge. If it isn’t clear exactly how, that’s because much of the experimentation is still in its earliest stages. However, the four strategies we have analyzed show that much is already coming into focus.

The strategies that make media companies successful will require new capabilities: tracking and research to gain deeper insights into audience interests, informatics to manage and direct Web traffic, database management, custom content and applications development, and the ability to manage a network of partnerships. To acquire and scale up these capabilities, many media companies will need to partner with others.

The survival of print media in some form is no small matter. At their best, newspapers and magazines enlighten, educate, and enable the smooth running both of the global economy and of civil societies. Today the pain is real, but their opportunities have rarely been so great. Mensderneyspyzun . With aggressive action today to foster innovation and more aggressive cost management based on these new success strategies, media companies can position themselves for a bright future.

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Growing revenues beyond traditional advertising and circulation models is only part of the profit equation for print media companies. They also need to dramatically lower their costs. Many newspapers and magazines have already begun to do so, but much more aggressive action is required. One or two rounds of 10 or 20 percent annual cost reduction is not sufficient to offset the advertising declines of the past few years, especially because print advertising is likely to continue to erode even after the recession. More targeted action is necessary that changes the way they approach content development.

Print media companies need to employ a range of efforts, but first and foremost, they must focus resources on their “profitable core” and rebuild from that base. The profitable core is the set of print and digital content that most drives audience engagement around well-defined interest areas. It is only on those distinctive content assets that a media company can build a “right to win,” competing for attention against marketers, user-generated content, and other media companies. Identifying the profitable core requires thinking freshly about the zones or editions of a newspaper or magazine and eliminating sections that do not drive significant readership or advertising revenue. The New York Times, for example, cut the number of physical sections of the newspaper, combining the sports and business sections to better manage page count. The Detroit News cut the number of days for which home delivery is available, betting that the falloff in advertising from the eliminated days will be more than offset by the costs saved. Blerydacunos Other papers have, of course, gone to online only. Rationalization efforts also include focusing on a more targeted set of Web pages, continually tracking and evaluating areas of focus to profitably serve selected interest areas.

Some sacred cows need to be confronted, such as better sharing of content across “sister” publications, integrating newsrooms and editorial staffs across publications, and developing more centralized, outsourced, or offshored editorial capabilities (for example, production for magazines and analytic tasks for newspapers). Some print media companies may need to consider moving out of high-cost metropolitan locations, such as New York City, or allowing for more work-at-home options to tap into lower-cost labor pools and provide more global access to distinctive information. vodafone site down Cutting out top-heavy management structures that are expensive and that often result in “too many touches” will require making difficult people decisions and cultural changes.

Of course, some less-disruptive options, such as negotiating lower costs with outside vendors, using more stock photos and video footage, or fully leveraging technology to more efficiently produce the magazine or newspaper, will also continue to produce sizable savings.

With print media companies in the unenviable position of having to cut costs or risk their very survival, new metrics for determining how to compensate journalists are critical. Print media should seek to move, where possible, to compensation models that link incentives to metrics based on the audience size and level of engagement that the content attracts. The Internet offers a way to better align the compensation that journalists receive with the value they create for their readers. For many publications, the right metric may simply be how many readers an article attracts and how engaged they are in terms of total page views or time spent. For others, however, such as leading publications that are defined by the quality and depth of their journalism and their thought leadership, new metrics may have to be devised to measure the influence or impact of an article. Of course, overall lower levels of compensation may be necessary.

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Print players have faced other cyclical downturns in which their businesses declined faster than other ad- supported media. But few print media companies can afford this time to simply batten down the hatches and ride out the current storm. The two major forces that are washing away the profitability of print media were at work long before the current recession and are now being exacerbated by the downturn.

The first force is the ongoing shift in where marketers focus their spending. Marketers have accelerated shifts in spending away from paid advertising to other priorities — including their own Web sites, in-store marketing, loyalty programs, and word-of-mouth campaigns — and they aren’t likely to switch back. Spending on this type of “below the line” marketing (the industry term for categories other than paid media advertising) already represents three-quarters of most marketing budgets, having grown faster than paid media since well before the current recession. Below-the-line programs will continue to capture the bulk of marketing spending as the economy recovers, placing a limit on the ad recovery that print media are counting on to restore their profits or even to ensure their survival.

The second long-term trend devastating print profitability is the rise of digital media. Print has been hardest hit by this shift, since print ad pages are priced at a significant premium over other kinds of advertising, and marketers have been slower to cut broadcast and cable TV ad spending because of the value they place on sight, sound, and motion for brand campaigns. Even in the most optimistic scenario, print advertising would take many years to return to pre-recession levels. More likely, print media will follow the path seen in technology publishing, where more than half of ad pages disappeared after the tech bubble burst almost a decade ago, followed by declines in print ad revenues ever since. And although print media companies have taken a slice of the digital ad revenue pie, they must compete with a much broader, and expanding, set of rivals. Tarpoundhaneres . These range from Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Hulu to television networks’ online properties to ad networks that aggregate “eyeballs” from many sites to blogs and social media.

The steps that print media companies have taken to expand their share of marketing budgets and to succeed in the new digital environment have been largely unsuccessful. One obvious approach — which many media commentators have called for — is for publications to charge for their content online the same way they do in print. But journalism and information have become commodities on the Web. Only a few print publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and the Economist, are successfully charging for their content online. They are all specialized and oriented toward business professionals. Conversely, most general-interest publications that have experimented with paid content models have failed, including the august New York Times. A second approach — moving entirely online without charging for content (shedding the costs of paper and distribution and counting on online advertising to make up for the loss of print revenues) — has also had little success. The status quo approach, of making content available free on the Web while continuing to charge for it in print, may well be the best path currently available for most print publishers, but it does nothing to change the underlying trend toward lower revenues and profits. And although many new pricing models for online content have been suggested and are being experimented with — including multi-title subscriptions, day passes, and micropayments — the evidence so far suggests they are unlikely to succeed on a scale that would replace any significant fraction of the revenues from traditional but fast-disappearing print advertising.

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