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The textile industry says it’s entitled to dues worth Rs 3,000 crores under the Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme. But it is unlikely these dues will be released. That means, liabilities related to the blackout or left out period cases will be given a silent burial.
The blackout period (June 20, 2010 to April 27, 2011) refers to a time when subsidy payments under the Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme were halted temporarily. The aim was to change the contours of the scheme from an open-ended scheme to a closed-ended one. The revised scheme came in April 2011.
Those who had invested during those 10 months of the blackout period, and were awaiting a decision on the eligibility of TUFS on the blackout period, have now got their answer. They are disappointed the funds are not going to be released. And the reason given is that there is a paucity of funds.
These textile units say they have continuously been under severe stress since April 2014 due to the non disbursal of committed liabilities under the TUFS scheme. Several hundreds of spinning mills are facing closure as they are likely to become non-performing assets.
So the textile industry has made a representation that the committed liabilities under TUFS scheme be disbursed and that cotton yarn be extended export benefits like Merchandise Exports from India Scheme on par with other textile products.
Pakistans’s garment, textile machinery and accessories exhibition Igatex will be held next April. The event is known to not only introduce the newest expertise but also improvise trade benefits and increase foreign investments and spending through business visits by international delegates.
As the largest textile and garment machinery show in Pakistan, it gathers more than 550 exhibitors from around 35 countries including Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Singapore, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, UK, USA etc with a number of innovative and versatile machinery models to be debuted at the fair.
Igatex Pakistan has played a pivotal role in the development of the textile industry by introducing efficient machinery to local manufacturers. It is becoming an increasingly significant textile and garment event with its scale setting new records year by year.
The event showcases products from apparel and clothing, plant, machinery and equipment, textiles, fabrics and yarns, business services, automation systems, embroidery and circular knitting machines, bleaching and washing machines, knitting and stitching industries.
Attendees are industry experts, scientists and executives of the fur, fabrics, clothing, textiles and fashion areas. This includes CEOs, distributors, importers, technical managers.
India’s exports of cotton-based readymade goods dropped by two per cent in 2015-16, while exports of cotton fabrics declined a little more than four per cent. The high price of domestic cotton, coupled with heavy duties on import of cheaper Chinese varieties, have hampered production of cotton goods.
This was part of a larger trend of a fall in merchandise exports, down for a seventeenth continuous month in April. Apart from cotton, manmade yarn also registered a major decline in export, of 11 per cent.
High export demand has pushed up prices. Also, high dependence on exports to China and the sensitivity of India's shipments to China's policy on a reserve cotton stock are a factor for the fall in cotton-based exports. India is likely to produce 34.1 million bales in the 2015-16 season, which ends on September 30. This is down from last year's 38.3 million bales. Successive droughts have reduced the supply from India, traditionally world leader in cotton production.
Textile exports are 13 per cent of all exports in terms of revenue earned. But a fall in FY ’16 is expected. This is because the rate of growth was a marginal 0.5 per cent in 2014-15, down from a significant rise of 12.4 per cent the year before.
"Industry leaders behind Rational Denim are hoping their collaborative project around responsibly produced denim will help pave the path for others to follow. Major players like Archroma, Garmon, Lenzing and Royo, each an expert in its respective area of supply chain, share the same belief that denim garments can be made in a more responsible way. And that’s exactly what the four set out to prove when they decided to team up."
Industry leaders behind Rational Denim are hoping their collaborative project around responsibly produced denim will help pave the path for others to follow. Major players like Archroma, Garmon, Lenzing and Royo, each an expert in its respective area of supply chain, share the same belief that denim garments can be made in a more responsible way. And that’s exactly what the four set out to prove when they decided to team up.
Sharing innovations
The ‘Roadmap to Rational Denim,’ to give the project its full title, debuted at Kingpins in Amsterdam recently, showcasing a prototype collection produced with the most efficient use of resources - particularly water - from fiber to finish. According to Alberto De Conti, Chief Marketing Officer at Garmon, they were drawn to the idea of being part of a group of companies that’s truly science-driven; a pool of industrial realities bringing to the table results that are rooted in sound research and development. Rational Denim takes a respectful distance from a number of so-called ‘sustainable’ market initiatives that are superficial, if not artificial. It is about delivering a pragmatic, highly responsible, very credible approach to denim product innovation and making it available to the creative minds throughout the world. As per Archroma’s estimates, nearly two trillion liters of water are consumed monthly in the production of 167 million pairs of jeans.
Each company contributed its expertise in a particular part of the denim manufacturing pipeline, to that end: Lenzing brought its class-leading fiber Tencel to the table; Archroma offered its Advanced Denim dyeing technology for indigo alternatives; Royo, with its years of experience using Tencel, produced the fabrics, both 100 per cent Tencel and cotton blends; and Garmon’s Green Screen-approved products simplified the finishing process.
An exhibition space was set up so that designers in search of inspiration could discuss their projects and ideas with representatives from the participating companies at Kingpins.
Flexibility and scope
The impression the denim players received was that a denim article produced in a fully sustainable way, cotton to final garment, and would not be attractive enough, with a totally different look to what is considered conventional denim. The stakeholders wanted to prove that this perception did not have a rational and that it was actually the other way round points out Miguel Sanchez, Head of Archroma. Not only could Rational Denim offer the same type of looks expected in conventional denim, but it could also widen the scope of colors, effects and final looks that are expected in a continuously evolving article like jeans.
Sanchez added that the most important aspect of the project is that the Rational Denim concept allows this flexibility, all within a production model where water and other resources are saved in each single step along the line. Andrew Olah, Founder and organizer of Kingpins, adds the project showed that sustainability is not a boundary. It is a source of inspiration and desire for fashion with soul and care.
Nevertheless, something is still holding denim mills back from integrating more sustainable practices, while a technology such as Archroma’s Advanced Denim is said to cut water consumption by 92 per cent, as well as energy usage by 30 per cent and waste by 87 per cent.
Suggested De Conti that fabric mills find themselves squeezed between the marginal, premium price they have to pay for responsible innovation in fibers, dyes and chemicals, and the reluctance shown by some of their brand and retail customers to take part of that burden onboard. As the Rational Denim tagline puts it, creativity without sustainability no longer makes sense.
Sanchez opined that brands are the connection between two dimensions - the end consumer and production - and brands should play an active role in informing end consumers about what it takes to make the jeans and the implications for the environment, so that everything isn’t about look and price.
Aiming for an over 21 per cent rise in outbound shipments from the actual level of 2015-16, the government of India has fixed textile and clothing export target at $48.5 billion for the current fiscal, textile Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar said. The country’s overall textile and garment exports remained almost flat at $40 billion in the last fiscal, said a senior textile ministry official. Still, the exports fell short of the official target of $45-47.5 billion for 2015-16.
With demand from China remaining tepid and recovery in the developed markets like the US and the EU still fragile, the ambitious shipment target for the current fiscal would be hard to achieve, especially in view of stiff competition from countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
According to official sources, for its part, the textile ministry has sought a quick resolution of the India-EU free trade agreement, which would pave the way for duty-free access of Indian textile and garment items to the EU, which account for over a third of the country’s garment exports.
Gangwar said the ministry has spent over Rs 6,500 crores on various schemes for the promotion and development of the textile sector. Roughly 5 lakh additional jobs have been created in the past two years in the textiles sector, he added.
Commemorating its 20th anniversary, EURATEX hosted its international conference, ‘Best in Partnerships’ devoted to inter-sectorial partnerships to boost European manufacturing recently. The European Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, Elżbieta Bieńkowska delivered the keynote addressed and said that textile and fashion industry is a strategic sector in the EU and it is really performing well. The European Commission is undertaking a number of actions to meet three main challenges of the sector: innovation, international competition and skills shortage.
In his address, EURATEX’s president Serge Piolat emphasised that textile and fashion sector is appreciating the European Commission’s willingness to build a dialogue with the industry. EURATEX proposed a concrete action plan to the European Commission to strengthen internationalisation of the SMEs, assure fair conditions for the European companies through stricter market surveillance, provide better access for SMEs to EU research funds and boost innovation investments at regional level through RegioTex initiative. ‘We are strongly committed to show meaningful results and we have equally high expectations of concrete actions from the policy-makers’, said Piolat.
The textile and fashion industry invited other sectors to identify common challenges and discuss new areas of cooperation. The conference was organised in a new format of Industrial Dialogues when two at a time representatives of different sectors had a free discussion between them and with the audience. The topics addressed were circular economy, creative industries, education and skills and international trade.
According to the 2016 Technical Textiles Top Markets Report brought out by the US Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration, advances in medical technology, rising incomes and higher standards of living, increased spending on healthcare and an expanding construction sector are some of the key drivers fuelling growing demand for US technical textiles.
The report looks at the state of play for US exports of technical textiles. It forecasts an increase in trade of 4 per cent annually through 2017, and cites innovation, new technology and trade relationships developed under existing and future free-trade agreements as sustaining the projected growth.
It also highlights nine key countries offering particular opportunities for growth in the US technical textiles field – Brazil, Canada, China, India, Korea, Mexico, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam. Mexico and Canada are the two biggest markets for US exports, accounting for 55 per cent of total trade, and according to the report a boom in Mexico’s car manufacturing industry has had a direct effect on demand for industrial fabrics. The report advises the US to maintain awareness of the value of the North American market, adding that the future of the industrial textile industry will largely depend on new technology, and how it is applied.
Swedish furniture major Ikea is planning to increase sourcing of cotton from India for its textile requirements as it gears up to start retail operations here by next year. The company, which is working with around four lakh farmers in India through local partners under its better cotton initiative (BCI) programme, is sourcing almost one-third of its global requirements from India.
According to Ikea Cotton Leader Pramod Singh, till now, Ikea does not retail in India. Given the retail plan which we have till 2025, obviously sourcing of sustainable textiles from India would increase dramatically even for the local market.
Meanwhile, Ikea is planning 25 stores in India by 2025, and has sourced goods worth 315 million Euros from India, in which textiles contributed around 70 per cent. While Singh did not share details of cotton sourcing, in 2015, the company had sourced around 35 per cent of its cotton from India followed by Pakistan at 21 per cent.
As a response to how much cotton sourcing from India can increase going forward, Singh said, if you add the retail expansion in India, the percentage is going to increase and will not remain the same. Indian cotton is used by not only Indian suppliers, but Ikea’s suppliers in Bangladesh, he said, adding that ‘India is the source of one - third cotton of Ikea.
LINKINGplus, which will take place from November 7 – 9, 2016 in Xiamen during Xiamen Fashion Week, is the new platform for professional matchmaking in the fashion business. Protagonists of the fashion shows among others are A William Tang, Aimer, Fun by Joeone and more. China's well-known brands such as Septwolves, Joeone, SE7VEN, Lilanz, K-Boxing, ANTA, Beni Bear, Edenbo, E-Joyous, it's Q, FGN, PEAK are located in Xiamen region.
With about 2.5 million residents in Southeast China, Xiamen is a coastal city and one of the economic centers of China's coastal region. The region around Xiamen represents one of the main clusters in the apparel sector in South China, close trade relations exist with Taiwan.
For the first time during Xiamen Fashion Week, a B2B platform for the fashion industry entitled ‘LINKINGplus’ will be launched at the Xiamen International Conference Center Hotel & Xiamen International Conference Center. LINKINGplus connects brands from around the world with Chinese fashion brands, the Chinese garment industry, investors, showroom owners, wholesalers and retailers mainly from Xiamen, but also from other regions including Taiwan. LINKINGplus is a smaller but efficient platform with about 100 participants and about 1,000 visitors.
The event is an additional tool for Asia’s largest fashion fair CHIC, China International Fashion Fair, taking place twice a year in Shanghai - seen to obtain further knowledge of the Chinese market in this trade mission and to establish personal contacts for the market entry in China.
The European Union and six countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have signed an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), the first of its kind between the EU and an African region pursuing economic integration.
The Economic Partnership Agreement with Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland is a development-oriented free trade agreement. The EU is the largest trading partner of this group. In 2015, the EU imported goods worth almost 32 billion euro from the region, mostly minerals and metals. The EU exported goods of the nearly same value, consisting mostly of engineering, automotive and chemical products.
The agreement provides for a number of protective measures, for instance, for nascent, fragile industries or for food security reasons. It guarantees Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, and Swaziland duty-free, quota-free access to the European market. South Africa will also benefit from enhanced market access, going beyond the existing bilateral arrangement.
All participants commit to acting toward sustainable development, including by upholding social and environmental standards. The EPA also establishes a consultation procedure for environmental or labor issues and defines a comprehensive list of areas in which the partners will cooperate to foster sustainable development.
For the South African market specifically, particular advantage has been granted to EU producers of traditional quality products with a worldwide reputation – for example, wines and food products.
