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Japanese manufacturers are eyeing the ASEAN region, especially Vietnam, as an export base since the signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in late 2015.
Asean is the region where they plan to pour more investments into.
A survey was conducted by the Mizuho Research Institute in February 2016, targeting 1,100 Japanese firms capitalised at 92,200 dollars or more.
Japanese manufacturers have shown their increasing interest in Vietnam with 53.5 per cent of them saying they choose Vietnam among the 10 Asean member states to invest in, up 4.9 per cent against last year.
When being asked where they plan to expand investments among the 12 TPP signatories, 12.8 of respondents named Vietnam. Japan and the US came second and third with 10.7 per cent and 4.9 per cent respectively.
Japanese manufacturers continue to pull out of China as its economy slows down. Only 76.4 per cent of them have bases in China, which is a two per cent drop from last year and the second decline in a row.
Indonesia hopes South Korea would become its partner in accelerating the pace of industrialisation in the country including the digital economy.
Around 34,000 Indonesian workers are at present recorded working in South Korea, including more than 4,000 who work as boat crew members.
The two countries will sign several memorandums of understanding covering creative industry, peat land restoration, sporting cooperation, anti-corruption fight, maritime and defense.
South Korea became Indonesia’s strategic partner on December 4, 2006, following the signing of the Joint Declaration on Strategic Partnership to Promote Friendship and Cooperation in the 21st Century.
The value of trade between the two countries reached 16.7 billion dollars in 2015 and Indonesia’s exports to South Korea include coal, nickel, copper, tin, pulp, natural rubber, plywood and footwear.
From South Korea, Indonesia imports wireless communication equipment, motor vehicles, computers, iron, ships, petrochemicals, textile and garments.
South Korea’s investment in Indonesia was recorded at 1.21 billion dollars in 2015 to make it the fifth biggest investor in the country with a total of 2,329 projects in infrastructure, manufacturing, information and communication technology and maritime sectors.
The two countries are working toward more cooperation in tourism and better contacts between their citizens.
H&M (Hennes & Mauritz) sales including VAT increased by five per cent in local currencies in April 2016 compared to the same month the previous year.The total number of stores amounted to 4,035 on April 30, 2016, compared to 3,610 on April 30, 2015.
The cold spring which continued into April in several of H&M’s large markets has had an unfavorable impact on sales of transitional garments.
The company plans to open 50 stores in India.
H&M features a wide range of fashion using many different concepts, from updated classics and basics, to clothes that reflect the very latest international trends.
H&M was founded in Sweden in 1947. It offers fashion and quality at the best price in a sustainable way. It’s a pioneer of design collaborations with style icons such as Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, Viktor & Rolf, Roberto Cavalli, and Comme des Garçons. H&M offers a varied assortment for the entire family, including concepts for women, men, teenagers and children. The products include clothing, accessories, footwear, sportswear, cosmetics, and home textiles.
In addition to H&M, the group includes the brands Other Stories, Cheap Monday, COS, Monki and Weekday as well as H&M Home. The group has more than 4,000 stores in 61 markets including franchise markets. The number of employees is more than 1,48,000.
Grupo M has chosen NGC’s PLM platform to drive innovation and efficiency for its rapidly growing business. Grupo M is the western hemisphere’s largest apparel manufacturer. NGC Software is a leading provider of fashion product lifecycle management (PLM), supply chain management and apparel enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions.
Grupo M has more than 10,000 employees in the Dominican Republic and Haiti and produces more than 20 million garments a year and 2,20,000 pounds of fabric each week. With NGC’s software, Grupo M aims to raise the bar even higher, relying on NGC’s fashion PLM for further productivity improvements throughout its complex organization. NGC’s PLM will provide Grupo M with key capabilities such as line planning, tech packs, digital asset management, material development, sampling, costing, and testing and compliance. Features such as workflow calendars, global collaboration and exception dashboards further improve communication while ensuring that key deadlines are met.
Working with NGC will help Grupo M reduce lead times by streamlining every area of product design and development.
Grupo M has built its business based on high standards of customer service, attention to detail and quality, and ethical manufacturing; the company’s customers include the largest retailers and brands in the world.
Textile maker Unifi based in the US produces 300 million pounds of polyester and nylon yarn annually.Unifi does recycling through its flagship fiber brand Repreve, launched in 2009.
Repreve has a 50,000 sq ft recycling facility, where plastic bottles, fiber waste and fabric scraps get deposited.
The company collects clear plastic bottles from processors around the country who first shred them into plastic flakes. These plastic flakes are converted into small pellets. The pellets are then melted, extruded and spun into polyester yarn.
Repreve makes three types of recycled yarn: 100 per cent from used plastic bottles, a hybrid of plastic bottles and fiber waste, and a hybrid of plastic bottles and used fabric.
College students across the US accept their diplomas wearing gowns made entirely of plastic bottles. Through such gowns schools can spread the message of waste management, energy conservation and environmental protection.
Repreve yarn is used to make everything from jackets and T-shirts to dress pants and even car upholstery. It’s used in brands like Patagonia, The North Face, Levi’s, Adidas, Nike and Ford.
Unifi has turned four billion used plastic bottles into yarn in the last seven years. It wants to educate consumers that high quality products can be made from recycled waste.
A wool fair will be held in Shipston, England, May 28 to 30, 2016. It will feature all things wool related - including live sheep and shearing demonstrations. Up to 20 rare breeds of sheep will be exhibited.
A arts and craft market will offer a mix of talented local artists and craftspeople selling their handmade creations from soaps to ceramics, and paintings to wood craft, textiles and up-cycled furniture.
Shipston is a market town with roots in the sheep and wool industries. In times gone by a sheep and wool fair was held here every year, but the tradition died out early last century until 2009, when it was revived. Since then the wool fair has been held every year.
its purpose is to put people in touch with their heritage in a fun and quirky way, fostering inter-generational contact and local enterprise. The highlight of the fair is the real life exhibition of sheep including many rare breeds and celebrity sheep. Brought to the fair with long coats, they will leave after being shorn in front of the audience. Traditional shearing methods will be demonstrated alongside more modern electrical cutters.
Weavers, spinners and dyers will demonstrate the many applications of wool.
China’s manmade fiber output during April was up 1.18 per cent on the previous month, to 4.3 million tons, which was also 7.6 per cent higher than the comparable figure of last year.
As a consequence, cumulative production in the first four months of 2016 expanded 5.89 per cent on an annual basis.
Strong growth in April was down to the seasonal impact and increasing stocks at the hands of main producers and traders. However, local analysts believe production could lose steam in May, when quotations for polyester, viscose and nylon are back to the downstream trajectories, prompting the main manufacturers to curtail supply.
Meanwhile China’s fabric production during April remained at the same level of the month prior, 5.9 billion meters, which was up 2.3 per cent against the same month of 2015.
China cotton values surged in April, as the government delayed its auction until May, pushing up cotton yarn quotations and denting the confidence of cotton fabric manufactures amid uncertainties of the industry. And manmade fabric production also lost pace, as inventories put more pressure on plants for cash-flow issues.
Local analysts predicted fabric production in May could be lower, while the high trading season is over.
In addition, total output from January to April rose 2.12 per cent.
China has agreed to terminate export subsidies under its demonstration bases-common services platform.Subsidies will be scrapped on a range of products from metals to agriculture and textiles.
This means China has ended a program which provided export subsidies of some billion dollars over three years to Chinese companies in seven economic sectors.
Since it joined the WTO in 2001, China has frequently drawn complaints that its exports are being dumped or sold at unfairly cheap prices on foreign markets. These subsidies were seen as inconsistent with the rules of the World Trade Organization and drew complaints from the US that its domestic textile manufacturers were badly hurt.
China still has other forms of support for industry in place, including relatively cheap and easy credit from state banks, state-regulated power prices that have often favored industry, and low prices for other inputs such as water.
In part, the dropping of the subsidies is an effort by China to move away from labor-intensive production and emphasise more sophisticated industries such as semiconductors. In effect China wants to become a high tech country and move up the value chain.
"The recently concluded Texprocess Americas one of the continuing themes was Made in the USA production and re-shoring resources. It’s somewhat anecdotal and not everyone is benefiting, but clearly some companies are. They include Hickory Brands, a North Carolina firm that specializes in shoelaces and braiding. Tucked away in a small booth at the end of an aisle, Hickory Brands was one of 38 firms housed in the Supply Chain USA pavilion. Hickory Brands supplies the major sporting-goods chains as well as shoe manufacturers."
Texprocess Americas is held alongside Techtextil North America and JEC Americas. The three trade shows cover technical textiles, nonwovens, sewn products and equipment, technology, and composites.
The recently concluded Texprocess Americas one of the continuing themes was Made in the USA production and re-shoring resources. It’s somewhat anecdotal and not everyone is benefiting, but clearly some companies are. They include Hickory Brands, a North Carolina firm that specializes in shoelaces and braiding. Tucked away in a small booth at the end of an aisle, Hickory Brands was one of 38 firms housed in the Supply Chain USA pavilion. Hickory Brands supplies the major sporting-goods chains as well as shoe manufacturers.
Said Richard Schaftlein, Hickory Brands’ vice president, that they’ve been busier than the previous two shows and a lot of it has to do with Made in America.
President of apparel-industry consultancy Alvanon, Edward Gribbin is also among those bullish on re-shoring but notes that the trend doesn’t mean a light switch can be flipped and empty factories will suddenly fill up with workers.
Technology and innovative software on display
The apparel industry now has a new consultancy, or at least venerable consulting services under a new name. Will Duncan & Associateswas formed about six months ago when longtime TC2 consultants Will Duncan and Douglas Adams bought the consulting business from TC2. The company’s chief operating officer, Adams said the move has been successful. He was also pleased with the level of attendance at Texprocess Americas. The new consultancy advises apparel manufacturers on how to take costs out of their businesses through lean manufacturing.
Adams said Will Duncan & Associates typically sets up one pilot line at a factory by teaching employees of clients its process. The consultancy now has clients across the U.S. and in Mexico, Central America and South America.
Cutting technology and innovative software were on display at the stands of two regular Texprocess Americas exhibitors, Lectra and Gerber Technology. The two firms typically have some of the most active exhibits.
New Lectra North America President Jason Adams, attending Texprocess Americas for the first time, said he was amazed at the show’s scope and breadth. He noted the innovative technology and automation that was on display, which he says is a reflection of trends seen in the industry.
Adams is among those who are believers in the re-shoring trend. The ability to bring manufacturing closer to the consumer has driven transport and manufacturing costs down and released more funding for capital equipment, he said. There are benefits across the entire supply chain. Because of that, I believe we’ll see more manufacturers looking at re-shoring as an option. I can even see it becoming a competitive advantage where a consumer chooses manufacturers/retailers based on proximity and how quickly they can deliver.
Visitors were shown Gerber Technology’s Digital Solution, which is an end-to-end, integrated system that passes information from one process to another complete with the software to network smart machines and smart products and enable full collaboration along the way. These products are integrated to enable both the mass production and mass customization of technical textile and fabric-related products and work together to help customers go from concept to market quickly and efficiently, according to Gerber.
A new trend
According to Dave Gardner, managing director of SPESA, a coproducer of Texprocess Americas, that the recent resurgence of textile and apparel manufacturing in the U.S. is a bona fide trend. Among the factors he cites are textile firms from India and China investing in U.S. facilities. Going hand in hand with that is technology that is allowing firms to cut costs and stay closer to their markets. Automation and robotics are key factors, he said.
American & Efird, the global sewing-thread specialist, chose the Atlanta venue to unveil its Colorlink App and a thread color-identification tool called Colorcatch Nano. Colorlink, which is A&E’s first mobile app to focus on thread color, is available for both Android and Applephones and tablets. A&E touts the app as ‘an end-to-end tool’ to connect designers and production managers in the thread color-selection process. The app offers an array of digital color choices and provides more control over thread color selection.
Colorlink also supports Colorcatch Nano, a companion device that is an advanced, hand-held color tool that will identify color on a variety of smooth, structured or patterned surfaces.
One of the most active stands at the show was that of Henderson Sewing, which displayed several uses of robotics. Frank Henderson, the company’s president, said it was one of the best events in the past decade.
Held May 3–5 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Texprocess Americas is part of a co-located trio of apparel-industry trade shows that also includes Techtextil North America and JEC Americas. Together the three trade shows cover technical textiles, nonwovens, sewn products and equipment, technology, and composites. Organised by Messe Frankfurt, Texprocess Americas is held every two years. Messe Frankfurt also produces a Texprocess show in Frankfurt, Germany.
According to Shaikh Mohammad Shafiq, Chairman, Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PRGMEA), at present total export of Bangladesh is 33 billion USD out of which textiles is 27.5 billion USD which includes 26.5 billion USD of Garments only. He said, we feel our share has been taken by Bangladesh. We need to fight for it and bring it to our advantage. Their exports are now increasing at 3.5 billion USD / Year and expected to hit 50 billion USD / Year by 2020, and whatever they have been giving in their budget estimate in last three years is coming true.
Pakistan ranks 138 out of 189 on ease of doing business, while last year it was 136. The cost of making garment in Pakistan is almost double ie, US $2.7 in Pakistan and US $1.5 in Bangladesh. The 60 per cent cost component of wages has a vital impact which is 2 times in Pakistan, the other costs that includes energy and financials also burdened due to high tariff.
PRGMEA Chairman continued to cite Government must realize that time has gone when raw material used in textiles (yarn, fabric etc) could be exported. This trend is not going to continue and it is the reason Pakistan is facing serious downfall. Countries have to use their raw material and export only possible in the form of finished products ie., Garments. We must believe in concept that countries have to be completely vertically integrated to use their raw materials in completely finished product.
