FW
Haryana will set up a textile park at a cost of Rs 181 crores. Haryana is one of the largest producers of cotton in North India. Haryana produces 20 lakh bales of cotton every year but is not able to sell more than three lakh bales within the state. The trade has to bear the expenses on transport of goods to Punjab, Gujarat and other states.
The textile park would solve these problems and help growers find a market for their produce. The park would be set up in either Sirsa or Fatehabad. Out of six lakh hectares of land where cotton is produced in Haryana, nearly three lakh hectares are located in Sirsa and Fatehabad alone.
The industry hopes the textile park will have a flatted factory concept, a plug and play model, and a synchronised value chain with a processing industry and weaving industry to keep the state intact as a preferable investment destination for an export and textile hub.
A Rs 14 crores incubation center would also be set up in Haryana for skill development of youth associated with the textile sector. The readymade garment sector in Haryana is growing at a rate of 25 per cent.
Cotton farmers in Maharashtra say the decision to cut prices of genetically-modified cotton seeds and slash royalty fees will significantly reduce their cost of production. The measure has come as a relief for individual cotton growers who are caught in crop failure, drought and indebtedness.
Maharashtra is India’s top state in terms of area under cotton cultivation. Genetically modified cotton is grown on 96 per cent of the total area under cotton cultivation in Maharashtra and the three cotton-growing regions—Vidarbha, Marathwada and Khandesh—see a sale of nearly 10.5 million packets of GM cotton seeds every cotton harvest. Because 96 per cent of the entire cotton growing area in India is under hybrids now, it is important to reduce the farmer’s cost of production.
Apart from a reduction in prices of GM cotton seeds, the royalty Monsanto Mahyco Biotech charges from seed firms in exchange for its patented cotton seed technology has been slashed by 74 per cent.
Farmers from Andhra Pradesh bought hybrids in Maharashtra due to the lower price last year. But those hybrids were meant for Maharashtra’s climatic conditions and soil and not suitable for Andhra Pradesh. So the uniformity in price makes sense.
Korea is providing funds for Pakistan’s technical textile industry. This will include technical assistance, machines, equipments and manpower training. The funding is likely to be provided at the start of the next fiscal year. The project will help initiate and establish the emerging field of technical textiles in Pakistan.
The proposed center will be a hub for excellence to impart training, develop skills of human resource, and provide relevant information in fields like geotech, meditech and sportech. The establishment of the center will help the development of value-added and quality products chain in the country.
Korea will provide the latest equipment worth Rs 300 million during this year. Pakistan will have to make concerted efforts to get a share in the world market. This requires lots of investment in research and development. The country still has to develop a proper strategy for the promotion of technical textiles related to the automotive, medical, construction/civil engineering and sportswear fields. Serious efforts have yet to be made toward synchronising textile products with the emerging needs of the world market by developing higher value-added products.
Although the textile sector is the backbone of Pakistan’s economy, the focus has been on conventional textiles, ignoring technical textiles and knowledge-based products.
Investors from Taiwan have shown an interest in investing $2.5 billion dollars in Indonesia’s petrochemical industry to manufacture ammonia and mega methanol. Ammonia and mega methanol can produce many derivative products, such as consumer textiles, industrial textiles, engineering plastic, resin, rubber and acrylic fiber.
Investors are expecting to build two factories, each on an area covering 100 hectares of land, in two phases. In the first phase, 6,00,000 tons of ammonia would be produced per year and 1.8 million tons of mega-methanol in the second phase.
The Taiwanese investors are yet to finalise a suitable location for their projects, taking into account the availability of natural gas as the raw material for petrochemical plants. The proposed investment is expected to help meet this year's investment realisation target, which is $45.2 billion, while the target for foreign investment realisation has been set at $29.3 billion, which is 65 per cent of the total investment target.
The Indonesian petrochemical industry has been encountering a rapid rise in its dependency on imported polymers. Indonesia is becoming increasingly attractive as an investment destination for petrochemical producers, particularly from Taiwan and Japan. There are huge opportunities for investment due to the high and growing domestic demand.
Chic will be held in China, March 16 to 18, 2016. It will occupy one lakh sq. mt. area and host about 1,200 exhibitors. Among these will be 700 Chinese exhibitors and 30 French exhibitors. The two other major pavilions will be those representing Germany and Turkey. Italian exhibitors will celebrate the second edition of La Moda Italiana, grouping together footwear and apparel. There will be segments on footwear and accessories, men's fashion, women's fashion, designers, fur and leather, children’s wear, casual wear and denim.
Among participating brands are Bleu Forêt, Derhy, Giorgio & Mario, Paul & Joe, Redskins, etc. Chic is not only a garment exhibition but bearing more functions to satisfy the demands of enterprises: channel extension, resource integration, market quotation checking, cross - border cooperation and exploration, international communication, trend release, capital connection.
The show aims at optimising the resources of department stores and shopping centers; mining e-business platforms, buyers and multi-brand stores. The March 2015 edition saw 1,25,000 visitors, of whom 44 per cent were agents and potential franchisees, and nearly 15 per cent were buyers from department stores and shopping malls. Independent multi-brand stores only accounted for one per cent of visitors.
Khadi production in India is expected to reach Rs 1,300 crores during this fiscal year, generating employment for more 19.50 lakh people. To promote the interest of rural artisans, development of 39 clusters will be taken up with an approximate cost of Rs 60 crores benefiting more than 10,000 artisans.
A sum of Rs 100 crores has been earmarked under the Scheme for Promotion of Innovation in Rural Industries and Entrepreneurship. A web based application and monitoring system will be designed and implemented. Village industries production is expected to cross Rs 45,000 crores during 2016-17, creating employment for more than 163 lakh people.
A sum of Rs 44 crores has been allotted to take coir products to the level of 5.5 lakh metric tons and create employment for more than 7.25 lakh people and exports of more than Rs 1,500 crores. A sum of Rs1,139 crores will be utilised during 2016-17 to assist 55,000 projects. This will generate employment for more than 4,25,000 people.
Khadi is produced mostly by micro and small enterprises in the country. Lack of marketing orientation and technological obsolescence are the major obstacles that prevent khadi from playing a larger role in the Indian textile arena.
Bangladesh’s exports are expected to reach $60 billion by 2021 coinciding with the country's 50th independence anniversary. Contributory factors are a dynamic private sector, strong economic foundation and fundamentals and the country’s strategic location.
Current annual exports now stand at over $31 billion and are now increasing at 12.5 per cent a year. The country wants to transform from a labor-reliant economy to a digital one. Sectors in the van are garments, medicine, leather, ship building and information technology.
Employment opportunities will be created for a million youths in the IT sector. It’s estimated, the country will need a few hundred thousand programmers in the next five years. Bangladesh hopes to become a mid-income country by 2021. The targeted growth rate for the current fiscal is seven per cent.
Meanwhile a month-long trade fair is on in Bangladesh. It covers an area of four lakh sq ft. Some of the leading industrial enterprises of Bangladesh and China, Thailand, Iran, and India are taking part in the fair. A number of high profile trade and investment delegations from these countries are visiting the fair to explore trade and investment prospects. India is participating for the fifth time.
"Apparel was the third-highest industry for reshoring in the US in 2014 says A T Kearney’s Reshoring Index, accounting for 12 per cent of cases of reshoring. According to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, from 2013 to 2014 (the latest year for which data is available), the US apparel industry’s output went up by 4 per cent, making it the country’s second-fastest growing manufacturing sector."
When apparel manufacturing jobs were flying off-shore in the 1990s, many brands divested in its clothing factory. However, over the last five years many of them expanded their workers at domestic facility they owned, before moving the operation into a larger facility to meet demand. In 1990, the US apparel sector employed 939,000 people. In the UK during 1970s and 1980s, whole towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire were fuelled by textile mills, providing up to 10,000 jobs per factory, and the industry employed between 750,000 and one million people in manufacturing.
The last three decades have brought these industries to their knees. Jobs flew overseas and factories closed, while clothing labels began to read ‘Made in China’ and, later, ‘Bangladesh’ or ‘Vietnam.’ Today, over 90 per cent of US apparel is imported and US apparel manufacturing employs about 135,000 people, according to the Alliance for American Manufacturing. In the UK, the Fashion & Textiles Association (UKFT) puts the figure at about 100,000 people.
However, some brands are bucking this trend. Last month, Burberry announced plans to invest over £50 million to expand its production in the North of England. Last year, Nike promised to create up to 10,000 new jobs in manufacturing and engineering in the US if the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement, is enacted. And new apparel labels like Zady, Reformation and Nasty Gal are making some - or all - of their products in the US
Is reshoring, that too when jobs that were offshored, or sourced from overseas, are brought back to the US and UK a reality? The data paints a complicated picture.
Apparel was the third-highest industry for reshoring in the US in 2014 says A T Kearney’s Reshoring Index, accounting for 12 per cent of cases of reshoring. According to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, from 2013 to 2014 (the latest year for which data is available), the US apparel industry’s output went up by 4 per cent, making it the country’s second-fastest growing manufacturing sector.
In 2014, there were only about 300 reshoring cases in US manufacturing industry, says AT Kearney. In 2015, that plummeted to fewer than 60. What’s more, the Index also shows that every year from 2011 to 2015, reshoring of US manufacturing failed to keep up with offshoring.
Sourcing Vs manufacturing
Currently, proponents of reshoring argue companies’ sourcing decisions are more nuanced. They say that factors like rising labour costs in China and fashion companies’ increasing need for speed to market - as well as issues with overseas suppliers like industrial unrest and problems with product quality - are making US and UK manufacturing more attractive.
On the other hand, some argue cost is still king. Countries like Mexico, Haiti or Peru can match US manufacturing on speed to market, for a fraction of the cost. The consensus seems to be that the US and UK won’t see apparel manufacturing growing to anywhere near the levels they enjoyed three decades ago.
Building agile supply chain
Keeping manufacturing close to stores also allows a fashion business to build an agile supply chain. Brooks Brothers, which calls itself America’s ‘oldest clothing retailer,’ has three US factories, which make 45 to 50 per cent of the company’s clothing, 10 per cent of its shirts, and 100 per cent of its ties. When apparel manufacturing jobs were flying offshore in the 1990s, Brooks Brothers, like many brands, divested in its clothing factory. However, over the last five years, it expanded its US staff, before moving the operation into a larger facility to meet demand.
Recently, Burberry waved the Union Jack with an announcement that it would invest over £50 million to develop a new manufacturing and weaving facility in Leeds. The facility will employ over 1,000 people, absorbing the whole staff from its existing two facilities in Yorkshire. However, Burberry declined to comment on what percentage of its manufacturing is done in the UK.
Incidentally, a 2013 Gallup poll found 45 per cent of Americans said they had made a special effort to buy US-made products - though this sentiment does not necessarily extend to all sectors of the market. While high-street brands like Asos source some products in the UK, due to the low efficiency of factories and the small volumes they work with, the current situation in British apparel manufacturing as it’s not for everyone.
The second edition of Avantex Paris, held recently at Paris Le Bourget, not only unveiled new exhibitors but it also consolidated the contacts made last September.
According to Michael Scherpe, the CEO of Messe Frankfurt France, he wanted this second event in February and Avantex Paris will always be held twice a year. At present, the fashion world operates to a rhythm of two main collections annually. We represent the place where two worlds - fashion and technology, which are not necessarily in step with each other - meet. We must keep to the pattern of twice a year, because we organise fashion trade fairs, so fashion must prevail, he explained.
Avantex Paris, now held for the second time, is a new trade fair dedicated to high-tech fashion fabrics and to R&D in the sector. It has been well received as the catalyst for developing the fashion industry in its widest sense towards more technological, better-connected, multi-functional horizons etc., which are being prized more and more by designers and the major fashion labels.
The event formed a meeting point for specialists in functional fabrics and state-of-the-art technology mainly from Taiwan, China, Thailand and Korea, including the ENSAIT/GEMTEX laboratory (France) and the French federation La Fashiontech, whose members are players in innovative, sustainable fashion.
The Ethisphere Institute honors companies that excel in three areas: promoting ethical business standards and practices internally, enabling managers and employees to make good choices, and shaping future industry standards by introducing tomorrow’s best practices. And for the sixth time, H&M has been recognised by the Ethisphere Institute as one of the world’s most ethical companies.
Ethisphere has developed a framework over years of research to provide a means to assess an organisation’s performance in an objective, consistent and standardised way. The information collected provides a comprehensive sampling of definitive criteria of core competencies rather than all aspects of corporate governance, risk, sustainability, compliance and ethics.
Scores are generated in five key categories: ethics and compliance program (35 per cent), corporate citizenship and responsibility (20 per cent), culture of ethics (20 per cent), governance (15 per cent) and leadership, innovation and reputation (10 per cent) and provided to all companies who participate in the process.
Ethisphere is the global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices that fuel corporate character, marketplace trust and business success. Companies honored have historically out-performed others financially, demonstrating the connection between good ethical practices and performance that’s valued in the marketplace.
ethisphere.com/
