The co-founder and managing director of one of India’s biggest integrated textile enterprises is to address international industry leaders at September’s ITMA-ITMF World Textile Summit, in Barcelona, Spain.

Dilip B. Jiwrajka has been responsible for steering Alok Industries Limited through a quarter of a century of astonishing growth and is recognised as one of a handful of Indian entrepreneurs who correctly read the impact of the dismantling of bilateral trade quotas during the past decade and responded imaginatively to the opportunities of the new business order.

With immediate family members, he incorporated Alok Industries in 1986, setting up its first polyester texturising plant three years later. Now with a turnover of around €700 million, the business has expanded downstream into weaving, knitting, processing, home textiles, garments and retail, and upstream into cotton spinning and the manufacture of partially oriented yarn through continuous polymerisation. Nearly half its production is exported.

Mr Jiwrajka will join a powerful speaker panel that will include Du Yuzhou, president of China National Textile & Apparel Council (CNTAC), Loek de Vries, president and CEO of the technical-textile leader TenCate, and Thomas Babacan, CEO of the world’s biggest textile-machinery manufacturer, Oerlikon Textile, and COO of the OC Oerlikon Group.

Former United Nations secretary-general and Nobel Peace Prize winner Kofi Annan – now an international advocate for sustainable business practice – will be a keynote speaker at the Summit, which will take place on September 21 at the Palau de Congressos de Catalunya in Barcelona, one day ahead of the opening of the ITMA 2011 textile-machinery show in the same city.

The ITMA-ITMF World Textile Summit (www.worldtextilesummit.com) is a one-day event, bringing together textile-industry leaders and some of the world’s most influential thinkers and policymakers in strategically important fields such as economics, trade, technology and sustainability. It sets out to deliver an inspirational, forward-looking agenda, comprising expert presentations and interactive panel discussions, designed to offer a global perspective on the opportunities and challenges that face the textile industry in the years ahead, and providing delegates with new ideas to maintain their success in the textile manufacturing and supply chain.

The Summit is the first joint initiative between CEMATEX (the European Committee of Textile Machinery Manufacturers) and the International Textile Manufacturers Federation (ITMF), and is being organised in partnership with the World Textile Information Network (WTiN) and international event organiser MP International. Oerlikon Textile is the Summit’s Platinum Sponsor.

ITMA, the world's largest international textile and garment machinery show, is recognised as the 'Olympics' of the textile and garment machinery industry. Held every four years at different venues across Europe, it is owned by CEMATEX, the European textile machinery manufacturers association.

www.itma.com