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Employees of debt-ridden Alok Industries have dashed off letters to the chairmen of nearly ten banks asking them to accept a resolution plan submitted by a consortium led by Reliance Industries.
They are of the opinion that the resolution plan will ensure the livelihood of about 18,000 employees, while the lenders will receive much more from the process.
Silvassa-based textile manufacturer Alok Industries was among the 12 first large non-performing assets identified by the Reserve Bank of India for resolution under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code in June 2017.
Alok currently employs 18,000 personnel (which at the peak was 30,000), generates revenue of Rs 35,000 crores and supports 3,500 vendors.
Nearly 30 per cent of the total lenders had rejected the resolution plan submitted by a consortium led by Reliance Industries. Subsequently, the Resolution Professional (RP) referred the company for liquidation.
The resolution plan offered the lenders a cash settlement of Rs 5,050 crores, which is well above the liquidation value of Rs 4,200 crores. This payment was to be made upfront and be available for the lenders for immediate deployment in further lending.
Here is a T-shirt designed to help clean polluted air.
The Rep Air T-shirt is made by Kloters, an Italian fashion start-up. It uses a patented material that captures pollutants including bacteria and unpleasant odors. Such a T-shirt is able to offset the pollution emissions of two cars.
Rep Air works with zero-impact and doesn’t need to be activated or powered by any external energy sources. The cloth is composed of two external printable layers, a water-resistant anti-bacterial fabric that encloses an intermediate core, made of dioxin absorbent fiber enhanced by nano molecules, capable of separating, absorbing and retaining pollutants in the atmosphere.
In addition to its sustainable benefits, Rep Air is a fashion product, offering comfort and style. The T-shirts, available in black and white, feature timeless and smart designs. Each item is made to last by using high-grade cotton and reinforced seams.
Kloters is a fashion brand for men founded three years ago. Japan, Korea, China, Germany, France and the UK are some of the countries where the brand is sold. Distribution reaches 17 countries through 110 luxury multi brand stores. From 2016, Kloters refocused on direct channels, with the aim of being closer to the final customer.
Christopher & Banks clinched an agreement with a private, unaffiliated investor group to sell and lease back its Plymouth, Minnesota corporate headquarters. The deal is worth $13.65 million. The company estimates the net expense impact in the first year of the lease to be approximately $300,000, including rent expense, net of depreciation expense and the amortised gain on the sale. The company has been struggling in recent years with declining foot falls and increased competition from both online and off-price retailers. While its same-store sales increased by 5.7 per cent in Q4, the company posted a net loss of $8.8 million for the period.
The company, which operates 462 stores in 45 states, is adding strategic initiatives across merchandising, marketing, e-commerce, and store operations, to stabilise the business and move toward more consistent financial performance.
Sales of Utenos Trikotažas in Q1 rose 34.2 per cent over the corresponding period last year. The main driver for such a performance was a 48 per cent growth in sales of on-demand jersey products to its main export regions, Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Switzerland. Exports made up 83 per cent of total group sales. But sales of its own brands -- Utenos and About -- posted only 2.4 per cent growth due to the unusually cold weather this March. Sales of services of functional-technical garment manufacturing by its subsidiary Satrija declined slightly 3.1 per cent. Utenos Trikotažas is the largest textile group in Central and Eastern Europe.
Rapid growth of sales and manufacturing was the key reason the group’s pre-tax profit almost doubled. Ebitda grew by 31.1 per cent. The group is making investments to expand manufacturing capacity and add new technologies in order to realize current growth opportunities as well as to strengthen its innovation capabilities. As a result, it expects to maintain significant double digit growth dynamics for the rest of 2018.
Despite higher level of raw materials and wages that it experienced this year the group observes positive dynamics in its order books and strong demand in its export markets.
According to the latest market report published by Persistence Market Research, the US men’s underwear and women’s lingerie market is expected to witness significant growth at CAGR of 5.4 per cent by 2021. This will be mainly owing to rising personal income in US households; propagation of modern retail formats such as supermarkets, discount stores, and pharmacy stores; change in lifestyle; and rising awareness regarding health & fitness and personal hygiene among men and women in the country.
The US men’s underwear market was estimated at $3,236.4 million in 2015, and is expected to register a CAGR of 5.1 per cent over the forecast period. On the other hand, the US women’s lingerie market revenue is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 5.4 per cent from 2015 to 2021. Major players in men’s underwear market are Hanesbrands Inc., Philips-Van Heusen Corporation, American Eagle Outfitters Inc., Ralph Lauren Corporation, Jockey International Inc., and Gildan Activewear Inc. The major players identified across the value chain in the US women’s lingerie market include Victoria’s Secret (L Brands), Calvin Klein, Fruit of the Loom (Berkshire Hathaway), Hanky Panky, Cass and Company, and Commando LLC.
Pure London, the contemporary men’s and women’s trade show, has announced its expansion into the children’s wear market with the launch of Pure Kid. The move comes over a week after rival trade show organiser ITE Events, which owns Moda, Scoop and Jacket Required, announced it was pulling out of the kids market with the closure of Bubble London, which had been running for 10 years.
Pure, which is organised by Ascential Events, says that Pure Kid would offer a curated platform for standalone kids brands and would sit alongside women’s wear brands. Managing director Julie Driscoll kids and maternity wear market was worth $158bn globally, a per Euromonitor, and Pure Kid would be tapping into that and the latest trends in the market, which are driven in particular by social media.
Pure London began life in the contemporary womenswear space before moving into menswear in 2016. Last season it added its first sourcing show Pure Origin and last week it revealed it would be staging a section dedicated to ethical fashion, called Pure Conscious. The next edition of Pure London will take place at London Olympia from July 22-24.
Aimed at developing skills in the youth to help them get gainful and sustainable employment in textile sector, the Ministry of Textiles has launched ‘Samarth’ scheme in the organized and traditional textile groups. The scheme was launched following approval of cabinet committee on economic affairs.
Synthetic and Rayon Textile Export Promotion Council (SRTEPC) chairman Narain Agarwal says the Samarth scheme aims at skilling nearly 10 lakh young Indians in organized plus traditional textile sectors over a period of three years from 2017 to 2020. He further added that the Centre has earmarked an outlay of Rs 1,300 crore covering the entire textile value chain, except spinning and weaving. The objective of achieving $300 billion exports in the textile sector by 2025 will be realized once 10 lakh skilled youths will be employed in the textile sector.
The scheme will have National Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF) compliant training courses with funding norms as per the common norms notified by Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE).
According to Agarwal, the textile committee as resource support agency (RSE) will perform various functions to identify and finalize skill development needs, standardize and develop the course content, specify the training centre’s infrastructure, standardize the admission assessment certification and accreditation processes, empanel assessment agencies, conduct training of trainers and training of assessors etc. The scheme also will ensure 70 per cent placement of successful trainees.
Experts say, the textile sector and the apparel market of Pakistan may suffer in the long term if the ongoing global trade war, between China and the US, continues further. It may cause a rise in the cost of production and raw material in developing countries, which in turn could cause inflation and threaten the global economic recovery. As trade declines and output falls, it may result in lower wages and unemployment. The trade war is taking place at a time when global investors are also nervous regarding the post-Brexit UK and EU trade negotiations, it is therefore to reduce trade between UK and its trading partners could decline. Additionally, other advanced economies can also step up protectionism and start making foreign imports more expensive through tariffs, para-tariffs and non-tariff barriers. This will hurt the decade-long efforts of trying to revive a more liberal trade regime and save multilateralism.
PolyOne has introduced a new fiber-colorant technology for polyester that incorporates proprietary high-pressure metering equipment with the company’s Color Matrix liquid concentrates. The technology enables the color-injection step to take place further downstream than in conventional colorant processes.
In the Color Matrix process, liquid color is injected into the polyester melt-flow between the end of the extruder and the spin head. This later-stage injection minimizes color contamination and reduces the time required for cleaning and color changeout. Further, several injection points can be added to run multiple colors or additives simultaneously on a single extruder line. This flexibility is especially beneficial to small-batch production, as manufacturers can use the same process to make a wide range of volumes and the process can be rapidly scaled onsite. Also, the new technology enables facilities that use reactor spinning lines to produce standard white polyester fibers to produce colored products inline, eliminating the need for a secondary aqueous dyeing process.
Traditional aqueous dyeing processes can use up to ten liters of water to color a single kilogram of fiber, but this new spin-coloring technology reportedly requires no water and consumes less energy and fewer chemicals.
It also eliminates the secondary treatment operations typically required to discharge wastewater safely into the environment. The technology’s precise mixing elements are crucial to harnessing the full benefits of flexibility and efficiency.
Japan, Korea and China are working on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). India is the only major economy seemingly distant from the idea of getting RCEP over the line. A reluctant participant from the very beginning, India finds that its own interests are almost entirely at a variance with those of the principal proponents of RCEP.
When most countries spoke of undertaking trade liberalization in both agricultural and industrial products, India drew its own divergent line in the tariff negotiations. India’s major concern was the presence of China. India was therefore reluctant to offer lower tariffs on too many goods to its northern neighbor. The concern was not without basis: even without preferential tariffs, India’s imports from China increased nearly eleven-fold between 2004-05 and 2017-18. During the same period, the increase in India’s exports to China was relatively modest, resulting in a steep increase in the trade deficit with China.
Adding to this is India’s not-too-happy experience implementing the three FTAs with Asean, Japan and Korea. India had agreed to eliminate tariffs on about 80 per cent of its products in each of these agreements and the outcome was quite similar—consistently rising trade deficits. While India lowered its tariffs to allow easier market access to its partner countries, Indian entities were unable to secure enhanced market access using the lower tariffs offered by the FTA partners.
