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An Italian company specializing in developing eco-friendly yarns, Manifattura Italiana Cucirini (MIC), has launched a specially treated sewing thread. Especially suitable for making PPE, the thread has significance in the fight against COVID-19. It has been developed with the help of a new treatment called SAFE that makes it suitable for all sectors demanding protection, hygiene and odour controlling properties, including production of medical supplies like masks, gowns, and PPE, technical textiles and sportswear.
The treatment lasts up to over 20 washes and is compatible with all fibers – synthetic, artificial and natural. It can be combined perfectly with other MIC treatments (i.e. water repellent PFC-free), without altering the characteristics and solidity of the treated sewing threads. This treatment is performed with Sanitizer , a disinfecting product that thanks to its properties can reduce the antibacterial and viral load up to 99 per cent.
MIC treated sewing threads are tested and approved according to international standards ASTM G21 (antifungal) and JIS L 1902 (antibacterial). Threads’ antiviral properties are tested in independent laboratories, therefore the final product in which Safe treated yarn has been used must necessarily be certified and authorised according to regulations.
Italian fashion company, Teddy Group, has assured Bangladesh of its support to the country’s apparel industry. The group recently assured the Bangladesh Embassy that it would neither cancel nor hold orders at the moment besides continuing its business with the country.
The group also assured Bangladesh of granting a major orders at the end of this month. However, the value of this order might be slightly due to a lower demand in the global apparel market. One of the top fashion groups in Italy, the Teddy Group has six brands including Terranova, Calliope and Rinascimento. It also has over 600 stores in 40 countries.
Bangladesh is one of the most important markets for the group from which it sources apparel products worth more than $200 million per year. The group set up an office in Bangladesh in 2004 where, currently, 80 people including two Italian nationals are employed.
Italian textile machinery manufacturer Lonati has launched a new four feed model under its Donna range of hosiery knitting machines. Certified to ACIMIT's Green Label standard, the new single cylinder machine, Donna LB04Y7 has electronic controls for the production of stockings and pantyhose with individual electronic needle- by-needle selection unit on each feed.
The machine is equipped with four motorized stitch cams for gradual or partial stitch narrowing or widening in any part of the sock, a motorized needle raising cam and electronic yarn finger control with a plating option at different heights and a motorized yarn finger for angular movement.
With a maximum speed of 850 RPM, it also has single or double dial jacks and an electronic device to maintain the size at any temperature of the machine. ACIMIT's Green Label certificate for the machine ensures that its carbon dioxide emissions are under control besides measuring its water consumption, energy usage and acoustic emissions to give an overall environmental footprint measurement.
Once manufacturers achieve this certificate, they are entitled to display the display the Green Label on the specific machine that has achieved certification.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) has developed six action-oriented guidelines to help Asian garment factories navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic and build business resilience. These six guidelines deal with six issues of managing cash flow, reducing costs, finding alternative sources of income, establishing an online presence, organizing factories for safer and more efficient operations, and communicating with workers.
On managing cash flow, the guidelines advise factories to first understand their cash flow. They advise manufacturers to reduce costs to ease financial liquidity and cash flow pressures on their factory operations. The guidelines also encourage factory owners to look to alternative sources of income - including emergency relief packages and short term opportunities such as PPE, - to survive the pandemic. They are advised to establish an online presence in order to promote their business and to facilitate communication with buyers.
They also urge manufacturers to reorganize factories to provide better safety measures and improve operational efficiency, and to maintain good internal communications with workers for a more responsive and productive factory environment during the crisis.
Economic Research Service’s Cotton and Wool Outlook report suggests for June 2020, the developing global economic slowdown has significantly reduced world cotton demand for marketing year (MY) 2019 (August 2019-July 2020). Although June’s global mill use forecast is at a 16-year low, the projected year-over-year decrease is nearly 15 percent.
The use of cotton mill across the world has declined more than 5 percent year-over-year in only 10 other years since MY 1920, with most of those reductions associated with global recessions, including the Great Depression. More recently, uncertainty surrounding the global financial crisis significantly limited world cotton demand in MY 2008, while a dramatic run-up in MY 2010 cotton prices to levels not experienced since the U.S. Civil War hampered mill use in MY 2011. While the overall severity of the COVID-19 pandemic remains unknown, the immediate shock to global cotton mill use has been historically significant.
Shengze, home to the largest silk wholesale market known for silk and man-made silk ranks 9th in top thousand Chinese towns for the economic strength. China National Textile and Apparel Council (CNTAC) has chosen Shengze as a ‘Pilot Zone’ in its efforts to foster and encourage more mega-class textile and apparel manufacturing clusters across the country.
On June 16, the 7th Jiangsu (Shengze) Textile Expo- Virtual Exhibition Online was launched with the symbol of “Silk in the East, Fashion from Shengze” in ceremonial atmosphere amid rising waves of economic recovery in China. Shengze, a famous town of silk, is in Wujiang District of Suzhou city in Jiangsu province, with about one-hour drive to the most commercially prosperous city of Shanghai, the town ranks the 9th in the top thousand towns for the economic strength in the country.
China National Textile and Apparel Council (CNTAC), the largest NGO to represent the voice of the industry in China, is stepping up efforts to foster and encourage more mega-class textile and apparel manufacturing clusters across the country. The mega-class is termed in the notion that there are going to be more textile towns or industrial clusters each with annual turnover for 100 billion Yuan (exchange rate roughly at 1 dollar: 7 Yuan) despite the fact there are hundreds of the designated famous towns of textiles and fashion under this benchmark.
Over 200 towns, cities and industrial bases of textile and apparel, nominated by CNTAC as famous hometowns of the industry in different names by sector, account for over 40 percent of the total output value in the whole textile industry in China with more employees than official figures that only take the data of considerably sized companies into account in the present statistics system.
Shengze stands out as Famous Town of Silk, in a capacity of the manmade fiber silk as it is home to the largest filament weaving (air-jet and water-jet weaving machines in operation) in the country and in the world as well, and also home to the largest silk wholesale market known as Eastern Silk Market China that has 7000 sales booths in house, and Shengze Manmade Silk Market Index is a well-known barometer of the silk business in China.
Mr. Li Ming, head of Wujiang District, said in its opening address that Shengze Fashion Week made its debut amid the 7th Jiangsu (Shengze) Textile Expo to carry out the strategy for integrating silk textiles into the fashion in a value-added industrial chain of portfolios, an important step for building up the world-class high-end textile and fashion cluster.
Mr. Sun Ruize, president of CNTAC, president-elect of International Textile Manufacturers Federation (ITMF) headquartered in Zurich of Switzerland, who is to take office in October, attended the opening ceremony with his remarks to reaffirm the stable situation in the basic perspectives of textile economy in China and pointed out the four aspects of focus on future development in parallelism voiced as “focusing on the industrial clusters to forge new systematic advantages, focusing on digital economy to foster new driver, focusing on domestic market to form new industrial circulation and focusing on factors of productivity to construct new ecosystem for value creation”. In this new trend, he predicted that fashion designers, international brands and fashion trend events would soon converge here, and Shengze would evolve into a town of fashion gradually in a clear shape-taking progress.
Mr. Xu Yingxin , vice president of CNTAC announced the decision to jointly build Shengze into the mega-textile town and Mr. Sun Ruize presented a plaque to the town official, with the words reading “ Pilot Zone of the World-class Textile Industry Cluster”.
Contributed by Mr. ZHAO Hong
He is working for CHINA TEXTILE magazine as Editor-in-Chief in addition to being involved in a plethora of activities for the textile industry. He has worked for the Engineering Institute of Ministry of Textile Industry, and for China National Textile Council and continues to serve the industry in the capacity of Deputy Director of China Textile International Exchange Centre, V. President of China Knitting Industry Association, V. President of China Textile Magazine and its Editor-in-Chief for the English Version, Deputy Director of News Centre of China National Textile and Apparel Council (CNTAC), Deputy Director of International Trade Office, CNTAC, Deputy Director of China Textile Economic Research Centre. He was also elected once ACT Chair of Private Sector Consulting Committee of International Textile and Clothing Bureau (ITCB)
Worn Again, a technology licensing company that is developing polymer recycling processes to enable raw materials in textiles and polyester packaging to be kept in constant circulation, has generated up to €8 million in new equity capital from investors, including follow-on commitments from two of its existing strategic investors, H&M and Sulzer.
This significant financial backing is a vote of confidence in the company’s enhanced recycling technology and proposed circular licensing business model, which promises to be crucial in closing the loop in the end-of-use polyester and polycotton/cellulose textile industry.
The investment provides over two years of operating capital and will be used to accelerate and complete the company’s fundamental technology development through the R and D phase. It will also provide the base financing required in the next phase of bringing the technology to market.
Through these ongoing strategic partnerships with two global industry players, Worn Again Technologies will benefit from the world-leading expertise of H&M Group’s supply chain and consumer-facing business, as well as the advanced manufacturing and industrial capabilities of Sulzer Chemtech.
With essential support from investors and a strong scale-up plan, validation of the company’s innovation is on the horizon, a crucial step towards the industrialisation of this technology.
Fast Retailing, the Japanese operator of the casual clothing chain Uniqlo, has narrowed the gap against Zara, the global apparel leader in market value, as investors applaud the company's major presence in China.
While apparel sales are down sharply in the U.S. and Europe, Zara's main markets, as the coronavirus pandemic takes its toll, the decline is relatively mild in Asia where Fast Retailing is focused on. Their share prices appear to be factoring in this reality.
Fast Retailing had a market capitalization of 6.53 trillion yen ($60.9 billion) last week, data from QUICK FactSet show. This compares with Inditex's market cap of around 9.17 trillion yen.
The market capitalization of Zara parent Inditex was once roughly 300 per cent larger than that of Fast Retailing as recently as summer 2017. Now the gap is about 40 per cent.
Tortona Design & Fashion has launched a new website for the textile and apparel sector. Called Ready to show online, the website has built a buyer/user base over the years via 40 sessions of IntertexMilano and the Ready to Show events in Milan, Italy since 2001. In addition, this list includes 30,000 contacts of prospective buyers worldwide.
The Ready to Show website will also include extensive webinars and events with international speakers and prestigious sponsors are programmed from July 2020. Each participating country will have its own page and all relevant national fashion boards and associations will be involved.
For example, Focus on Italy section will be not only considering Italian fashion brands currently selling globally but will also show the worldwide production partners for Italian Fashion. In the section AREA ITALIA, it will also show made in Italy production partners both for Italian brands and for all top end private labels willing to collaborate with Italian makers for medium-high target of clients, tailoring, MTM, Be-spoke, etc.
The services section will include, Q.C., forwarders, links to special NGOs working on sustainability, innovative tech companies as well as free-lance designers or fashion schools
Completely user-friendly, the site will allow all countries, even the smallest in the fashion business, to have visibility within a dignified presentation not always available during traditional trade shows. Buyers will have the ability to work with ease and without fighting crowds devoting time to searches and exhibitors.
The demand of textile value chain, including yarn, fabric and apparels is likely to contract by 25-35 per cent in the financial year 2021 due to ongoing economic slowdown following lockdown to curb the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, finds a study by India Ratings and Research.
The demand of yarn, fabric and apparels is set to remain muted throughout first half of the financial year 2020-21. The FY21 demand growth would typically depend on discretionary spending, and thus a gradual recovery in household income over the second half of the current financial year between October 2020 and March 2021.
Normalcy in revenue across the textile value chain may return by the second half of the financial year 2022, on the back of reopening of the retail space, a normal monsoon, the festive and wedding season. The demand revival will also depend on government measure to incentivise exports, the study forecasts.
Weak demand of value added products like yarn, fabric and apparel is bound to impact raw material prices. The study forecasts a correction in cotton prices over 2QFY21 from the levels of Rs 95 per kg as of May 2020 due to a low demand and high holding levels at Cotton Corporation of India. However, holding stocks could only provide a short-term relief. Some of the inventory is expected to be exported, given the advantage of lower prices and rupee depreciation.
