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H&M has 32 supplier factories in Bangladesh. But many of these lack safe fire exits. The Swedish fast fashion retailer is facing growing criticism for worker rights abuses in its supply chains. Among the steps it has to take are removal of locks from fire exits, removal of sliding doors and collapsible gates, and installation of fire-rated doors and enclosures in stairwells.
There was a huge fire at an H&M supplier, Matrix Sweaters, in February. There were just a few injuries, largely due to the fact that most workers had yet to arrive for their shift. It was later revealed the factory had missed dozens of deadlines to eliminate fire hazards and make the structure safe.
In reply H&M launched a series of events styled Conscious Exclusive Collection at the Louvre in Paris to promote itself as a sustainable company. H&M would launch a video featuring the pop star Mia to promote the company’s World Recycle Week on April 18 to 24, the same week that labor rights activists will commemorate the 1,134 workers killed in the Rana Plaza building collapse in 2013. That devastating garment industry disaster prompted a series of initiatives to promote the industry.
But workers’ rights advocates have called on H&M to prove its commitments through action rather than symbolic gestures.
https://www.hm.com/in/
"Call it smart clothing or functional fabric, these innovations are ground breaking. Electrical engineers, software developers, manufacturers, and fashion designers have all collaborated to merge the age-old industry of textile materials with nano-technology and the Internet of things (IoT). Today’s smart fabrics are far more complex than a blend of wools, cottons, and polyesters. They incorporate a variety of metals, fiberglass, and ceramics."
A lot of innovation has crept into textiles sector with the use of digital technology. With the help of electrical and software engineers the face of the industry is changing fast. Soon smart technology will be quite literally woven into the fabric and clothes. Merging traditional textiles with cutting-edge technology to create a new frontier for both industries is the in thing in the US, and its spreading across the world with the ‘Made in USA’ tags.
Taking textiles to a new level
Call it smart clothing or functional fabric, these innovations are ground breaking. Electrical engineers, software developers, manufacturers, and fashion designers have all collaborated to merge the age-old industry of textile materials with nano-technology and the Internet of things (IoT). Today’s smart fabrics are far more complex than a blend of wools, cottons, and polyesters. They incorporate a variety of metals, fiberglass, and ceramics. Rather than being superficially glued together, these make up the basic elements of the fiber, itself. These innovative fabrics not just make a fashion statement but serve a much-needed purpose of safety and protection.
The textile industry is reinventing fabrics to allow them to collect and store data to address many unresolved human needs. Already, scientists have developed fabrics that react not only to the signals our body emits but also to the elements it faces. After collecting the data, high-tech fabrics can actually process that information. This means that the fabric will be able to see, hear, communicate, and store energy. Ultimately, the fabric will monitor the health of and heat or cool its wearer, accordingly.
Some clothing currently in the making include safety gloves for industrial businesses and body armor for the military. Weaving chips into the fabric of these items is practical for mountain climbers and athletes, as well as our nation’s defense. There are some amazing possibilities: like temperature-controlled uniforms for military and law enforcement, fabrics that are incredibly lightweight and durable, as well as flame resistant.
These technical textiles can forge protective gear for firefighters, rendering them impervious to flames, replicate the sensing capabilities of a smart watch, or detect when a wounded soldier needs to be treated with an antimicrobial compression bandage.
US government backs the initiative
With so many incredible possibilities, the US government is backing this initiative. The Obama Administration has just announced the new revolutionary fibers and textiles manufacturing innovation hub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a reported $2 billion in manufacturing research and development (R&D) investments. This leading consortium of 89 manufacturers, universities, and non-profits organizations by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will spearhead a new manufacturing innovation institute in partnership with the Department of Defense.
Having already brought in over $300 million in public-private investment from leading universities and manufacturers, this initiative aims to accelerate the revival of the US textile industry. It expects to generate over 50,000 jobs in multiple fields the next 10 years. Genevieve Dion of Drexel University examined future knitting capabilities and explains that, by adding conductive yarn to different types of knit structures, knitting as a digital fabrication can mimic 3-D printing.
According to Juan Hinestroza of Cornell University one of the big transformations of the 21st century is going to be taking fabrics and apparel and turning them from something that has a fairly low functionality into a functional high-tech industry. So, there are concepts like digital fabrication, the Apple watch wherein the material becomes the function with automatic abilities.
Just like the materials worn by Spiderman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, the average person will have almost super human abilities to keep themselves healthy and safe inside their clothes.By adjusting both the size and the space between nano-particles, Hinestroza’s team was able to control the interaction between light and matter, meaning we can make and control colors.
Weaving in Profits
As this exciting new innovation spans multiple industries, the investment opportunities are incredibly diversified. First, there are all of the integrated device manufactures and chip makers such as Intel Corp. Analog Devices Inc, and Texas Instruments. Then, there are designers and sellers of chips that outsource the manufacturing, such as Qualcomm and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Further, textile manufactures like International Textile Group, apparel companies such as VF Corp and Columbia Sportswear, materials businesses like Corning, as well as health and biotech companies like Amgen will all see major growth from the imminent success of smart fabrics.
Denim in India and across the globe has become the flavour and trend at fashion weeks and fashion forecasts with its various innovations in its fabric weaves, yarn blends and surface textures. The overall field-based perception in the market is that demand for denim cloth and its products have never been so good.
The denim sector is on a growth path vis-a-vis other sectors of the textile industry, riding high on upbeat demand for denim in India; and many existing players are also expanding their capacities. Similarly, new ones are making investments so as not to miss the TUFS subsidy and concessions from state governments, especially the US, which are cotton producers and/or are predominant in textile production, and doling out concessions and special incentives to get investments from textile corporates and projects.
Due to the industrial slowdown and tapering out in textile production, China will become a marginal player in the future, while India, Vietnam and Bangladesh are all set to emerge stronger. Bangladesh is more active in denim products, for which it has achieved export of $2billion, and having ambitious target of exporting denim products worth $7billion by the year 2021.
Meanwhile in India, demand for denim apparel such as jeans, shirts, tops, short trousers and jackets etc is growing fastest in all apparel segments, driven strongly by the urban and semi-urban aspiring youth. In addition, demand is fuelled and unleashed by unprecedented growth and the rise of online consumerism via a growing trend for shopping malls and e-commerce. This is leading to the increasing share of denim apparels in the fashion segment of retail markets.
With Vietnam’s increasing participation in trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the EU free trade agreement, local textile sector is poised for faster growth, creating increased demand for sustainable energy and water use practices. The textile, apparel and footwear sector is a significant contributor to Vietnam’s economy. In 2015, the sector's exports reached $39.2 billion and generated approximately three million jobs, mostly for women.
While this sector is energy and water intensive, there are opportunities for reducing resource consumption by 20 per cent or higher by using the latest technology and good operating practices.
Energy and water efficiency assessments will be conducted at about 30 factories over the next 12 months to help them reduce operating costs and improve productivity while contributing to the country’s green growth and climate change targets.
This manufacturing sustainability initiative will promote resource efficiency by systematically assessing performance improvement opportunities, conducting benchmarking studies, sharing technology best practices, and raising sector-level awareness for broader uptake.
Factory assessments at supplier factories across the textile value chain, including cut-and-sew, dyeing-and-printing and garment-washing operations, will identify and develop cost-effective measures to improve energy and water efficiency while helping suppliers improve productivity and competitiveness.
Himatsingka, a vertically integrated home textile major with a global footprint is planning to increase it sheeting capacity. It has manufacturing facilities at Hassan in Karnataka which it plans to expand. Their plans include increasing sheeting capacity, backward integration into spinning and a foray into terry towels. The group is doubling its existing sheeting capacity from 23 million mt. per annum to 46 million mt. per annum. The company will be installing for the first time 2, 11,000 spindles as a part of its backward integration into spinning. The group’s entry into the terry towel segment will see it setting up a capacity for 25,000 tons per annum. Expansion is progressing as scheduled, with the group estimating to commission its enhanced sheeting capacity by June 2016.
The company remains focused on sweating assets across the group in order to drive operating performance. It expects to see better operating performance by its manufacturing and distribution divisions, which would be further aided by the new sheeting capacities that are expected to be on stream in financial year ’17.
The group has over 12 brands globally, including marquee brands like Calvin Klein Home, Barbara Barry, Esprit, Bellora and Atmosphere. It also has a strong foothold in the private label space.
www.himatsingka.com/
In a significant development, All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) has urged the Pakistan government to completely remove the Gas Infrastructure Development Cess (GIDC) from the entire textile chain to enable it to regain its competitive edge and market share.
APTMA chairman Tariq Saud said in view of declining oil and natural gas prices in the international market there is no justification for imposition of GIDC on textile industry, which is already burdened and has become uncompetitive vis-à-vis to their regional competitors in the absence of liquidity flow and high cost of doing business.
Further Saud said that the continuous decline in exports, especially the textile exports is a matter of concern as the exports of textile sector contribute over 55 percent in earning of the total export of the country and any decrease in textile exports would indicate decrease in the foreign exchange earning of the country.
Saud mentioned that the import of synthetic yarns and fabrics of polyester, viscose and other blends is increasing by quantum leaps, during the financial year 2012-13 the import of yarn under Chapter 55 was 12,077 tons and is expected to reach 47,000 tons in the current fiscal. The import of fabric under Chapter 55 was 65.1 sq. mt. and is expected to increase to 125 million sq. mt. During the first eight months of the current financial year compared with the last full financial year (2014-15) imports have surpassed the total imports in case of yarn and fabric imports.
A denim expo will be held in Bangladesh, April 25 to 26, 2016. The aim is to highlight the country as the prime destination for sourcing latest designs of jeans and other denim products. A total of 49 participants are scheduled to take part in the expo. Besides local denim manufacturers, 37 foreign participants from 13 countries will participate.
Participants include: entrepreneurs from the apparel sector, apparel traders, fashion professionals and stakeholders of the industry from Europe, US, UK, Germany, Italy, India, China, Pakistan, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, Japan, Spain and Brazil. Seminars will be held on different issues including innovative trends and techniques of the denim world, different aspects of design, production, finishing and marketing.
The expo will create a platform for the country’s denim manufacturers to showcase their latest innovative designs of jeans to global buyers and retailers and inform them about the industry’s strength. This is the fourth edition of the expo. The third edition drew around 2,300 visitors from France, Spain, Germany and Turkey, most of them buyers.
Bangladesh aims to be the third largest denim exporter after the US and Italy by 2021. Manufacturers in Bangladesh are going into value-added product manufacturing.
Businessmen from Turkey and Bangladesh, see immense potential to work together in fashion and fabric trade. At a recent meet they observed that Bangladesh is among the reliable sources in the world for producing readymade garments while Turkey is becoming a hub for good quality fabrics for the Middle East, and Eastern European fashion.
Turkish businesses showed an interest in increasing trade volume between Bangladesh and Turkey in the field of textile and clothing. They feel, Bangladesh can be the promising market for good quality fabrics while Turkey can be an important export destination for value added RMG products. However, business-to-business and government-to-government initiatives are necessary for that to happen.
Recently, to show its strength in textiles, Turkey organised a fashion and fabric fair titled ‘Premiere Vision Istanbul’. At the show held from March 23 to 25, nearly 146 exhibitors, mostly Turkish companies, presented their collections. Exhibitors from Italy, Germany, Portugal, France, Austria, Bulgaria, United Kingdom, Romania, Lithuania, Morocco, China, India, Taiwan and Pakistan showcased their fashion collection like yarns, fabrics, designs, accessories and denims, at the event.
The just concluded TEXPO 2016 in Pakistan, organized by TDAP saw delegations from South America, Jordan, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Nigeria and India. They met TDAP CE S M Muneer and TDAP Secretary Rabya Javeri Agha. The high profile meetings generated some serious business leads. Led by Aman Chamber of Ccommerce & Textile and ready-made clothes syndicates, the delegation from Jordan shared great enthusiasm for hosting a single country exhibition of Pakistan, which will be organized by the TDAP in Jordan.
Meanwhile, the Thailand delegation discussed the signing of Pak-Thailand Free Trade Agreement and asserted the significance of early signing of the agreement. They showed keen interest in export of cotton yarn. Grande Asset of Thailand expressed interest in products of home textile for hospitality industry.
The Indian delegation exchanged views on great potential for trade between the two countries in the textile sector and also discussed the trade constraints. Two leading trade chambers of Pakistan, the FPCCI and the KCCI, also held conducive business meetings with delegates from Netherlands, S Africa, S America, Spain, Indonesia, Thailand, Jordan, China, Kuwait, India and Nigeria.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership may adversely affect Indian textile and garment exports to the US. Exporters from TPP member countries will get preferential access to the US market while non-members like India will lose out. The US imported about $82 billion worth of apparels in 2015 of which India supplied about $3.7 billion. This accounted for 21.5 per cent of total apparel exports from India, down from 23 per cent in 2014. If the duty turns disadvantageous for India's apparel exports, the share is likely to fall substantially.
TPP has a rule that makes it mandatory for a partner country that makes clothes to source yarn, fabrics and other inputs from another partner country. Only then will the manufacturing country get duty preference. This rule means garment manufacturers in TPP countries have to source their raw materials among themselves even if suppliers from that region are not the most efficient.
So India’s exports of apparel to TPP countries like the US will go down since buyers would like to procure from TPP-based vendors. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a free trade agreement between 12 countries of the Pacific rim including Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States of America, Japan and Vietnam.
