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Having 15 offices and 500 professional employees across India, IIGM is India’s leading technology and service provider. The company, which recently participated in the GTE exhibition, offers embroidery, CAD systems, sewing, automation or cutting. To this, the company recently added new products like exhaust fans, cooling systems, electrification for machines. Raghav Sharma, Director of the company expounds on its operations and the Indian market.
Being extremely price conscious, Indians prefer investing in something viable. “For that we are conscious of bringing in cost effective yet credible technology, as we increasingly realise the need to adopt new technologies and systems in Indian Textile space is real now. This can be practically calibrated through the various loan schemes available in the market to facilitate,” views Raghav Sharma, Director, IIGM.
Sharma believes that though the current US-China trade war is affecting business, things will get back to normal soon. “The current economy environment is tough. Yet, companies need to find business which is currently shifting from China to other countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh though it has its own set of challenges,” he opines.
Amidst all this chaos, India retains its position. “Though we are not growing, our business is stable. One of the reasons we are not getting new orders is because we are not adopting new technologies or systems. A big price war among exporters is affecting our profit margins. We need to be more cost effective and adopt new technologies sooner than later,” Sharma states.
According to Sharma, GST implementation has made the domestic market more organised. “Business in MBOs is picking up as people are spending on apparel and fashion. Exports have stabilized. However, the industry has a long way to go in terms of compliance to global industry standards,” he says.
The European textiles and clothing sector cares about circularity of its products; for several years already, the industry is re-inventing itself to offer solutions that are workable and make a sustainable impact. That’s why Euratex welcomes the new Circular Economy Action Plan, released by the European Commission, as it reflects many proposals developed by our industry. At the same time, this Action Plan is just the starting point for developing a more focused strategy, which must take into account the specific challenges of our sector. Euratex has already developed its own comprehensive strategy, including specific recommendations and workable solutions.
Euratex welcomes the plan as it sets the foundations to change the way products are made, the way waste is managed, and the way people consume. The Action Plan wants to be as comprehensive as possible, involving all the actors in the value chain, citizens, Members States and local realities. The EU needs now to set the conditions to remove structural barriers, address or prevent market failures and bring harmonised solutions across the European single market. Essentially, the EU needs to create a European market for reuse of textile material and such an objective can be achieved with the upcoming Strategy for Textiles.
For the textile and apparel industry, the Circular Economy Action Plan is not a “wake-up call” because companies have been doing a lot for the past years. They invested money in research and innovation and came up with a wide range of solutions. They, though, faced a lot of challenges that prevent such solutions to enter a broader market.
Therefore, Euratex is asking the European Commission to focus on the following points:
• 99% of the textile and apparel industry is composed by SMEs. The EU needs to take into consideration their specificities. In particular, SMEs lack fund to upscale their products and solutions, plus they need a legislative framework which is not burdensome. Remove barriers, not create new ones.
• Companies need a territory that can deal with the whole circularity process. A company, which produces textiles by recycling used clothes or other fibers, should have a textile recycling facility in the vicinity, not 250km away. Euratex welcomes the proposal of the European Commission to provide guidance to achieve high levels of separate collection of textile waste by 2025. It must be done in a well-organized manner, so to avoid tons of waste textile waiting to be processed.
• Green Public Procurement will increase demand allowing business to invest in circularity. In 2015, public procurement accounted for 13.1 % of the GDP in the EU, this means that almost €1.923 bln were spent by public bodies purchasing goods or services. That is a formidable leverage which Member States can use to boost closed-loop productions, promote scale economies which lower costs and proactively drive changes. Authorities can then choose high quality and durable products, reward low-impact manufacturing processes, and favour products designed with recycled or biobased/biodegradable materials.
The National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO), representing the full spectrum US textiles from fiber through finished sewn products, has welcomed the Trump administration’s proposals on an economic stimulus package to gird the economy against the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. However, the organization urged officials to reject any attempts by importers to remove China 301 tariffs on finished products as part of any relief package.
“The president has outlined the need for a broad economic stimulus package that would include various tax incentives to help impacted industries and workers. We support the administration’s efforts to bolster the economy as a response to the coronavirus outbreak, while opposing add-ons to any stimulus package designed to exploit the crisis,” said NCTO President and CEO Kim Glas.
“Any push by importers and retailers to take advantage of the situation and press for removing China 301 tariffs on finished consumer goods—a penalty imposed by the administration in a separate investigation of China’s illegal intellectual property (IP) abuses—should be rejected immediately,” she said. “Tariff breaks on finished products will only pad the pockets of retailers that have long benefitted from China’s trade abuses, and ultimately will not be passed on to the consumer,” Glas said.
“Granting importers a tariff break would essentially let China off the hook for systemic IP violations that have displaced U.S. workers and undermined U.S. leverage in negotiating a phase two agreement,” Glas continued.
As a part of Phase One deal with China, the administration reduced duties on finished apparel and textile products implemented on Sept.1 from 15 percent to 7.5 percent. “NCTO has strongly supported applying tariffs on finished products as a key negotiating leverage but opposes keeping tariffs in place on certain inputs that are not made in the US such as select dyes, chemicals and textile machinery. NCTO has long-argued tariffs on these inputs hurt domestic competitiveness for US textile manufacturers,” Glas said.
Finished apparel, home furnishings and other made-up textile goods equate to 93.5 percent of US imports from China in the sector; while fiber, yarn, and fabric imports from China only represent 6.5 percent, according to government data.
Despite a generally difficult demand environment for textile fibers and a drastic drop in prices for standard viscose, the Lenzing Group recorded a solid business development in 2019. Its disciplined implementation of the sCore TEN corporate strategy and the accompanying focus on specialty fibers, helped the company to mitigate the effect of unprecedentedly low standard viscose prices.
Our focus on specialty fibers contributed to our resilience during the reporting period. Our goals for 2024 underpin this confidence in our future”, says Stefan Doboczky, Chief Executive Officer of the Lenzing Group. “The implementation of the key projects in Thailand and Brazil plays a central role in further strengthening our market position and in accomplishing our ambitious climate targets,” Doboczky adds. The expansion and modernisation of the dissolving wood pulp plants in Lenzing and Paskov, which started in 2017, will increase pulp production capacities by roughly 35,000 tonne annually. The expansion in Lenzing was successfully implemented in the second half of 2019. At roughly the same time, the new capacities at the Paskov plant were gradually started up. This process will be completed in the first quarter of 2020.
Based on the decision to build a dissolving wood pulp plant in Brazil with its partner Duratex, Lenzing will increase its self-supply by 500,000 tons annually, thus strongly enhancing backwards integration. The plant is expected to start operations in the first half of 2022. Lenzing and Duratex hold 51 percent and 49 percent, respectively, in the joint venture. Industrial CAPEX are expected to total roughly US$ 1.3 billion (based on current exchange rates and customary tax refunds). Expansion of specialty fiber capacities In 2019, Lenzing also started the construction of a state-of-the-art lyocell production facility in Thailand. The investment for the new plant with a capacity of 100,000 tonne amounts to roughly EUR 400 million. Construction work started in the second half of 2019. The completion is scheduled for the end of 2021.
The primary focus of the company in the coming years will be on the implementation and execution of set climate targets and investment projects in Thailand and Brazil. Lenzing aims to increase the share of high-quality specialty fibers in fiber revenue to 75 percent by 2024 and the share of internally produced pulp to more than 75 percent. In line with its strategic commitment for 2024, Lenzing strives to reduce CO2 emissions per ton of product by more than 40 percent compared with 2017.
The group also expects the comparatively positive development of its specialty fiber business to continue. Driven by the challenging situation in standard viscose and low paper pulp prices, prices for dissolving wood pulp are expected to remain at low levels. Caustic soda prices in Asia have already declined significantly over the past months; this development is now also noticeable in Europe. The above effects significantly impact earnings visibility for 2020. The Lenzing Group currently expects the result for 2020 to be below the level of 2019. The market developments reassure the Lenzing Group in its chosen corporate strategy sCore TEN. Lenzing will continue to focus on the strategic investment projects which will yield a significant contribution to earnings starting from 2022.
"Owning to its faulty approach, the fashion industry’s sustainability efforts have remained largely insufficient. Instead of completely overhauling its business model, so far the industry has only been focusing on recycled materials, waste and rented clothing. The latest ‘Pulse of the Fashion Industry’ report by Global Fashion Agenda states only 60 per cent companies are making visible efforts towards sustainability. However, they need to scale deeper in order to be completely sustainable."
Owning to its faulty approach, the fashion industry’s sustainability efforts have remained largely insufficient. Instead of completely overhauling its business model, so far the industry has only been focusing on recycled materials, waste and rented clothing. The latest ‘Pulse of the Fashion Industry’ report by Global Fashion Agenda states only 60 per cent companies are making visible efforts towards sustainability. However, they need to scale deeper in order to be completely sustainable. At its present rate of development, the industry will be able to meet neither the Paris Agreement nor the Sustainable Development goals.
To achieve this, companies need to set competition aside to partner with opponents for the sake of the industry at large. They also need to look at new materials that they have not yet explored.
Lack of accountability, insufficient infrastructure
One big reason for the industry’s failure to achieve its sustainability goals includes lack of accountability by
supply chains. Neither end of the supply chain has taken the reins in driving sustainable change. Though some companies have adopted circularity as a cure for all their sustainability woes, they have been unable to address the issue sufficiently. Even designers are being trained to create products in such a way that they can be recycled. However, lack of sufficient infrastructures prevents the industry from achieving its goals.
Increasing collaborations, rewards to help achieve sustainability goals As Amina Razvi, Executive Director of Sustainable Apparel Coalition points out, to tackle this problem, brands will need to reconcile sustainability with some of the more important economic metrics driving the fashion industry—like growing demands that have brands stocking up on endless inventory.
Supply chain improvements, rewards to increase sustainability
To provide a solution to this problem, Global Fashion Agenda has assembled a think tank with key stakeholders, including McKinsey & Company that focuses on improvements to supply chain efficiencies. However, this alone will not solve the problem. The industry also needs to reward companies that are truly sustainable. They also need to outline the key leverage points for making the sector more sustainable by collaborating with other industries.
The industry can’t solve its problems with the thoughts that created it. It needs to start talking to economists, different industries to come up with the key leverage points to focus on.
The European Commission has released a new report that guides industry leaders on lessening the environmental impact of apparel production. The methodology covered in the report includes both the myriad processes required to bring a T-shirt to market including material production, spinning, printing, finishing, packaging, transportation, electricity generation, along with the standard use cycles employed by consumers such as washing, drying, ironing.
The study is part of a wider series of environmental-footprint pilots, known as Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR), designed to communicate the life-cycle environmental performance of popular products to business partners, consumers and other stakeholders using detailed and comprehensive technical guidance.
This specific PEFCR defined T-shirt as any apparel product, fit to dress the upper body that mainly consists of a tubular- or circular-knit fabric without a full-length opening. Items in the study included athletic T-shirts, singlets and other vests, polo shirts and T-shirts with short, long or no sleeves for men, women, children and babies.
Stakeholders consulted for the project included the Belgian Federal Public Service for Health & Environment, the Business Environmental Performance Initiative, the Cotton Research & Development Corporation, the Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea of the Republic of Italy, Euratex, the European arm of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Hugo Boss, Nike, Inditex and Lenzing.
The outbreak of Coronavirus has compelled Texfusion to cancel its upcoming event in March 2020. The show was scheduled to take place from March 25-26, 2020 at the Business Design Centre in Islington alongside the London Print Design Fair. Set to welcome about 150 international fabric manufacturers, this would have been the show’s 11th edition. Its 10th edition, held in November, featured a dedicated China Pavilion with more than 60 fabric and garment manufacturers, while a Taiwan Pavilion showcased ten companies in partnership with the Taiwan Textile Federation.
However, a new event called Texpremium is set to take place on 23-24 June. Dedicated to high-end European textiles, this will be the first premium fair in Textile Event’s portfolio.
The London Textile Fair, which showcases exhibitors from all over Europe, is also set to go ahead on 14-15 July, and Texfusion will return for another season on 21-22 October.
In 2019, Supima hit milestones surpassing 500 global licensees and over 200 brands using the Supima trademark as a consumer-facing ingredient brand. Supima enters 2020 poised for further advancements in both market penetration and initiatives in verification and authentication. Supima has fostered deeper connections with its partner brands and manufacturers through education and promotional activities. Since 2016, Supima has had a 44 per cent increase in licensees.
Sustainability continues to be a major factor in fibers, fabrics and finished products and Supima is working to address the issue. The cotton origin verification platform with Oritain has been one of Supima’s main accomplishments.
Competing standards and organizations are not the best way to proceed. This does not work. Without knowing the origin and without knowing the environment that the cotton is produced in it is impractical to make any claims about the product. Hence, there is no easy solution and those brands/retailers that want to get their message right are going to have to work together with the supply chain and their constituent partners to be authentic about the product that they are putting on their shelves. With the impacts of a trade war with China, and the extenuating complications to global trade with the coronavirus, there has been a direct and significant effect on the demand and utilization of cotton in general.
The synthetic fiber market is growing at four per cent. The business landscape features fragmentation now. A handful of vendors dominate the market, while the remaining shares are distributed among several vendors. This is expected to lower the entry barriers for new vendors. The market is also witnessing a high participation of regional players, who are generating substantial market revenues. Leading vendors in synthetic fibers are involved in the research and development of innovative products. Customisation is a leading strategy that is being adopted by vendors to gain momentum in the global specialty fiber market. Collaboration and geographical expansion of production facilities is another key strategy being adopted by market players.
The market is expected to be dominated by Asia Pacific excluding Japan. This could be attributed to the soaring population in the region. Automotives are expected to boost the market’s growth. Expanding demand for automotive interior materials like tweed, velvet and velour is expected to drive the market’s development. Polyester is the most generally used material in automotives because of its light weight property. Developing demand for lighter automotive interior material is expected to drive the market till 2026.
Leading vendors operating in the global specialty synthetic fiber market are Mitsubishi, Toray, Asahi Kasei Fibers and Indorama.
Sri Lanka’s earnings from apparel exports grew 5.1 per cent in 2019. Exports to the European Union grew over five per cent. Exports to the United States grew 3.3 per cent. Exports to other markets such as Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Australia and Japan also grew at a comparatively faster pace.
The country’s apparel sector expects immediate revenue loss due to the Coronavirus outbreak in China to be about a month’s value of apparel exports. With the industry expected to struggle due to the supply chain derailment, from the month of March till June, the hit is expected to be about 30 per cent of the cumulative export values for the four months. The industry has estimated the loss based on the assumption there will be no cancellations in orders from buyers and in that scenario the industry would be faced with a tough time with manufacturing the standard orders and the additional loss, which put together would be a burden. Meanwhile, fabric supplies are expected to arrive from China by end-March and the challenge for the industry would be to have the production completed and delivered within the standard cycle of 1.5 months. Overall costs are expected to increase, specially on the logistics side, due to the cancellations of routes from China to Sri Lanka.
