Tatarstan to set up textile industrial cluster

The delegation of the Ivanov Region, led by the governor Mikhail Men, has today arrived in Tatarstan. The purpose of the visit is to decide on building a textile industrial cluster with the participation of Tatartsan’s oil, gas and petrochemical companies, and to sign an agreement on modernising the textile industry through integration with the petrochemical sector.

According to the Tatarstan Industry and Trade Ministry’s press service, an analysis of global consumption of various types of fibre shows there is a clear-cut trend of reduced consumption of woollen and cotton fibre and a drastic increase in consumption of polyester staple fibre and thread, as well as of polypropylene fibre and thread. According to the European statistics committee, imports of textiles in Russia is over 3 billion euros. The dominating items are fabrics and ready-made clothes, manufactured with the use of synthetic fibre and thread. According to expert estimates, Russian companies’s projected demand for chemical fibre and thread, needed to produce consumer goods and technical products, will by 2015 be at least 600 thousand tonnes.

Polyester fibre is the most attractive of the synthetic fibres. Production of PET in Tatarstan is scheduled to begin not earlier than in 2010. The project’s investor is the Ak Bars bank. The projected output is 300 thousand tonnes. As of now, the key petrochemical manufactures Nizhnekamskneftechim makes 180 thousand tonnes of polypropylene a year. The brands of the products meet the demand of the textile industry.

Polyethylene terephthalate is a synthetic linear thermoplastic polymer of the polyether class. It was first industrially manufactured as a fibre-forming polymer but soon took one of the leading positions in the polymer packaging industry. In terms of growth in demand, PET is the most rapidly growing polymer material. The fibre-forming PET is present on the market under the trademarks of lavsan and polyester.

Owing to its wide range of properties and the possibility to control its cristallinity, PET has been widely used and now ranks fifth in the world, accounting for 6.5 percent of the total consumptions of polymers. The main areas of its application are production of preforms, fibre and film.

The end users of the product are manufacturers of bottles, the textile and tyre industries, as well as companies producing photographic film, tapes and discs.