KOCHI: Coir Board has announced that it received encouraging response at the four-day annual International Erosion Control Association (IECA) conference and exposition held recently, in Florida, the US. Coir Board chairman, V S Vijayaraghavan expressed confidence that the event would help the country improve its geotextile exports to the 40 nations of IECA.
The annual conference of IECA is the unique opportunity to showcase the products, technologies and innovations in the field of erosion control and soil stabilisation measures before the global community. The Coir Board is a corporate member of the IECA. Even an increase of 2-3 percent in the share of coir in the global geotextile market in the coming years can lead to a quantum jump in the export of the Indian coir geotextiles, he said.
In the context of the constantly changing requirements of the erosion control industry and the erosion control products, the Coir Board is also equipping itself to meet the growing global requirements by developing new coir products to cope with the latest requirements of the end-users. At present, Indian coir geotextiles is being exported to 25 out the 40 IECA member-countries, of which the USA accounts for 41 percent in terms of quantity and 31 percent in terms of value out of the 3,754 tonnes of coir geotextiles valued at ` 20.23 crore exported from India during 2009-10, as against 2,512 tonnes valued at `11.40 crore during 2005-06.
Other major importers of coir geotextiles are Japan, France, Australia, Belgium, Austria, Germany, Italy, Russia and Switzerland. Sri Lanka is the major Indian competitor in the coir geotextile export sector.