A recent Economic Times reports, South India’s cotton knitted garments capital, Tirupur, is struggling to step up production as demand for personal protective equipment such as masks and bodysuits has thrown up a $2 billion business opportunity. About 200 units in Tirupur currently make personal protective equipment (PPE), mostly to serve the needs within India. Industry body Tirupur Exporters Association has been pushing local manufacturers to improvise on products to meet global standards, the report said.

The report also says, the magnitude of the coronavirus outbreak in the US and Europe and its impact on the economies have left exporters in India worried, as those are their biggest markets. There are innovations underway to see how the masks can be made more user-friendly. Frequent usage of disposable masks is not viable as contamination is worrying. That the face masks that are mostly used contain polypropylene procured from China has added to concerns.

In order to address this, an incubation centre for textiles and apparels in Tirupur is trying to develop a reusable, biodegradable, antibacterial facemask. This will be a cotton, three-layered mask that will be developed with the outermost layer being water repellent and anti-viral, the middle layer filtering the virus and the innermost layer will be finished in a way that provides comfort to the mask wearer