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The Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) tabled its Annual Report 2015/16 in the Legislative Council today. The report covers the second year of the HKTDC’s current three-year planning cycle, during which the Council continued to focus on three main objectives: helping Hong Kong companies, capitalising on the opportunities arising from the new global economic order, promoting Hong Kong as Asia’s global business platform and enhancing the competitiveness of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Looking back on his first year as HKTDC Chairman, Vincent HS Lo, reportedly said that the challenging external trading environment had adversely affected Hong Kong’s exports and consumer and investor confidence. He also highlighted the opportunities for Hong Kong arising from China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the HKTDC’s efforts to establish Hong Kong as the ideal business hub for the initiative.
During the 2015/16 financial year, the HKTDC staged its mega promotion, Think Asia, Think Hong Kong, in Toronto, Canada and Chicago, the United States that attracted over 3,300 North American business leaders. The Council also organised its first combined products and services promotion In Style in Hong Kong, Jakarta, as well as major promotional activities in cities across the Chinese mainland.
Exploring new opportunities and connecting business in response to the growing momentum of the Belt and Road Initiative, the HKTDC introduced a number of elements to its events including seminars, networking activities and business matching.
Meanwhile, business delegations were organised throughout the year to destinations along the Belt and Road routes in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations). During the year, the Council opened new Consultant Offices in Tel Aviv, Israel and Delhi, India, expanding its global network to 46 offices worldwide.
There has been a major dip in demand for Bt cotton in India and farmers across the country have shown a marked preference for locally-grown varieties.
Against the 3,000-odd hectares that usually came under local varieties of cotton last year, this season around 72,280 hectares have come under locally grown varieties. Local cotton, which is resistant to diseases like leaf curl virus and pest attacks such as whiteflies, accounted for seven per cent of the total cotton acreage of 10.17 lakh hectares in north India this year. The acreage under local cotton is expected to increase to 25 per cent in the next two to three years.
With the monsoon covering most cotton-growing regions of the country, planting across Maharashtra, Gujarat, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh has picked up pace and farmers are trying to complete sowing operations before the cut-off dates.
The overall acreage across the country could come down to some 105 to 110 lakh hectares. The area under cotton cultivation was 119 lakh hectares in 2015-16.
The cut-off date for cotton sowing is around July 10 and can be extended to July 15, after which the growth of cotton becomes stunted.
Before the advent of Bt cotton in India, some 25 lakh hectares were under locally-grown varieties.
Chinese consumers are taking to athleisure clothing in a big way. VF Corp, an apparel company that has brands in categories like sportswear and outdoor sports, has grown its Asian market from 20 million dollars to 1.2 billion dollars in the past decade, including over 600 million dollars in China alone.
GPS sport watches, compression leggings and hydration packs are the new must-haves for wealthy Chinese, pumping up the multi-billion dollar sportswear industry.
US companies have been moving fast to take advantage of the growing demand for athletic apparel and goods. Adidas is planning to open 3000 more stores in China in the next five years, expanding from 9000 to 12,000, after its 2015 sales in the region increased 18 per cent.
The sportswear market in China grew to 25.3 billion dollars in 2015 and is expected to grow to 43.1 billion dollars by 2020.
However as US companies are becoming bigger and bigger, they've been edging out Chinese sportswear sellers. Some companies in China are seeing a profit growth slowdown. The main drivers of the sportswear boom, the 2022 Winter Olympics and the potential boost from the end of China’s one child policy, have disproportionately strengthened international athletic-wear companies, leaving Chinese companies to decelerate.
Many units in Surat’s manmade fabric sector have remained shut in the last few months. The main reason is the import of under invoiced Chinese fabrics. Around eight crore meters of Chinese fabrics have been dumped in various parts of the country in the last year.
About 70 per cent of weaving units are operational but at less than 60 per cent capacity while the rest have shut shop. Around 90 per cent of units are not getting job-work from traders. Most textile dyeing and printing mills are without job-work. This is due to the dumping of Chinese fabrics and falling demand for polyester fabrics in the country. Around 1.5 lakh workers are currently jobless. Most of them have moved out of the city to their hometowns in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa.
Around 45 per cent of weaving units--around three lakh power loom machines--have shut shop in the last three months. This has been due to dumping of under-valued Chinese fabrics at a cost of less than Rs 8 per meter.
Surat's manmade fabric sector contributes to around 40 per cent of the nation’s manmade fabric demand. The daily production of manmade fabrics in the city is pegged at four crore meters.
BJP Lok Sabha MP from Almora constituency, Uttarakhand, Ajay Tamta has taken charge as Minister of State, Ministry of Textiles.
Prior to his election to the 16th Lok Sabha, Tamta served as a member of the Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly from 2007 to 2012 and again from 2012 to 2014. He has also served as a Minister in the Government of Uttarakhand, as Cabinet Minister during 2008 -2009 and as MoS during 2007-2008.
"Now-a-days, more women are wearing yoga pants. The problem for cotton is two-fold. These yoga pants contain more synthetic fiber than denim and more fiber goes into denim than yoga pants. Even if you had 100 per cent cotton yoga pants, we’d rather see the denim market going strong because more weight goes into those products, Worsham said."
Cotton is still the No. 1 fiber for apparel at retail, although cotton’s market share has declined over the past several years.
According to Berrye Worsham, president and CEO of Cotton Incorporated, the research and promotion group that are funded by U.S. cotton producers and importers of cotton products to the United States, the one culprit creating cotton’s current challenges in the apparel market, it is the recent fashion trend that favors lightweight yoga pants over denim. This is a real problem for cotton, he said. This is a consumer trend which has caught up all over the U.S.A. recently.
Now-a-days, more women are wearing yoga pants. The problem for cotton is two-fold. These yoga pants contain more synthetic fiber than denim and more fiber goes into denim than yoga pants. Even if you had 100 per cent cotton yoga pants, we’d rather see the denim market going strong because more weight goes into those products, Worsham said.
Cotton use decline
Sales of denim, the biggest user of cotton, have dropped while sales of yoga pants and other active wear have grown over the last couple years. Most active wear is a big user of polyester and other synthetic fibers.
His comments came during the Southeast/Mid-South Young Guns Tour of Cotton Incorporated’s headquarters in Cary, N.C. During the tour, roughly 40 young cotton producers, in their 20s and 30s, from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia saw first-hand how their cotton research and promotion check off dollars are being spent.
Cotton farmers pay an assessment of $1 per bale plus one-half of one per cent of the value of the bale to fund Cotton Incorporated. U.S. importers of cotton goods also fund the work of Cotton Incorporated. The programme is administered by the Cotton Board in Memphis, Tenn. which conducted the ‘Young Guns’ tour. Cotton Incorporated’s budget is $76 million this year, down $4 million from 2015.
Cotton is still the No. 1 fiber for apparel at retail, although cotton’s market share has declined over the past several years. According to Cotton Incorporated, over the past 12 months, cotton’s share of the apparel market was 52.5 per cent.
In fact, cotton’s decline in share began in 2008 after enjoying years of robust gains since the mid-1980s when cotton’s share was just 43 per cent of the apparel market. Cotton’s strong market gains continued until 2007 when the natural fiber controlled an impressive 62 per cent of the apparel market. A major drop in cotton’s share occurred during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009 which dropped demand for all textile fabrics.
Focus on active wear market
According to Worsham, cotton’s share of the apparel market will stabilize at 52 per cent and that efforts will work to move cotton’s share upwards again. Overall economic growth in the U.S. is critical for future gains, he said.
Cotton Incorporated is now focusing on the active wear market that is a stronghold for synthetic fibers, to further build cotton’s market share. Cotton Incorporated is enhancing its social media presence to reach consumers over more expensive television advertising, although advertising is still a key part of the group’s marketing strategy. Their new campaign, which started a year ago, is called ‘It’s your favorite for a reason.’ That’s a slight change from ‘Fabric of our Lives’ which is still the overreaching theme of our campaign. In the campaign, consumers, rather than celebrities, talk about their favorite cotton item and how that item makes them feel.
Cotton Incorporated uses paid advertising on Google, to further reach consumers looking for active wear. For example, when a consumer googles ‘best yoga pants,’ the ‘Fabric of our Lives’ campaign will pop up on the first page with suggestions for cotton yoga pants.
Consumer demand is still strong for cotton, despite the challenges. In fact, Cotton Incorporated conducted a survey of the textile trade in 2015 that show 68 per cent of the industry globally said they plan to use more cotton in 2016. Of that 68 per cent, 60 per cent cited consumer demand as the top reason, according to Worsham.
Consumer demand is still the most important component and that’s why you have to make sure that consumers still believe that cotton is a good thing, a viable choice in products today, Worsham concluded.
More than 600 business representatives and experts from Vietnam’s textile and support industries came face to face with Germany’s latest textile and apparel technologies. The event, held by the by the VDMA Textile Machinery Association and supported by the Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association (VITAS), provided an opportunity for companies to establish contact, exchange information and establish a mutually beneficial co-operation, VITAS deputy chairman Trương Văn Cẩm has been quoted to have said. According to Cẩm, German machinery is of high quality although its cost is high.
If Vietnamese textile manufacturers want to develop modern technology, they should co-operate with high-technology providers to catch up with global quality and labour productivity, feels Cẩm. In fact, a considerable proportion of technologies in Vietnam’s textile and apparel industry needs to be replaced to improve quality, especially those supplying cloth for export garment-making.
After signing Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Vietnam is increasingly becoming a much preferred textile manufacturing location by companies worldwide. TPP will be instrumental in reducing 18,000 tariffs. Vietnam is almost a sole supplier of textiles among the TPP member countries and an important supplier of textiles and garment to big consumer markets like the US.
A recent study published by the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) reveals, the textile and clothing sector in the country is in a fragile state and not in tune with international changes. Surprisingly, after having been the leader of Tunisian exports, the sector continues to decline to the point that the whole economy suffers.
This is indeed a sad statement from a high employability sector given its low competitiveness that is no longer able to face global competition. This strongly impacts on the wages of labour, mainly women. Not to mention that this precarious condition of the industry is largely due to the crisis in the eurozone which has significantly altered the security situation and stability in Tunisia, particularly after the revolution. This led many investors to leave the country and bring down investments in the sector, according to FTDES.
Surprisingly, the number of companies in the sector fell sharply to 2,500 in 2005 and 1,907 in 2012. The number of job posts also decreased from more than 250,000 prior to 2005 to 185,000 in 2012, added the study that was conducted on a sample of 28 industrial enterprises specialized in the field of garment for export spread over the various delegations of the governorate of Monastir and 260 women working in the textile sector.
Europe’s textile and clothing sector will boost competitiveness through the EU regional Smart Specialisation Strategies and a better connection of regional innovation clusters.
Over 100 participants from 23 regions across 19 EU countries attended the public launch of the RegioTex initiative held recently at the Committee of the Regions in Brussels. The event co-organised by the European Technology Platform for the Future of Textiles and Clothing (Textile ETP) and EURATEX - the European Apparel and Textile Confederation, was embedded in the 11th annual public conference of the Textile ETP.
The RegioTex initiative brings together stakeholders from the textile, clothing and related industries, their research, technology and education providers as well as public authorities and agencies in a joint effort to develop and implement strategies that will facilitate and accelerate the emerging industrial renewal in traditional manufacturing regions across Europe. The goal is to strengthen the regional textile innovation capacities and to establish effective European collaboration and peer-to-peer learning between regional actors.
With the revised EU Regional and Cohesion Policies for the period 2014-2020, Europe’s regions will have some €110 billion available to spend on research and innovation-related activities based on their regional Smart Specialisation Strategy (RIS3). It is expected that these top-down RIS3 policies and programmes will reach the greatest impact on regional industrial competitiveness, innovation performance and job creation potential if they are implemented in a close partnership with the regional innovation actors organised in a bottom-up approach.
Texprocil, the first Export Promotion Council set up in India in the year 1954, and responsible for promoting Cotton Textile exports from India held a function recently in Mumbai to release an Ernst Young Study report on ‘Textile Industry as a vehicle of job creation for inclusive growth.’ The event was attended by the leading industry heads in the textile and clothing industry.
R. K Dalmia, Chairman, Texprocil mentioned that there were 3 objectives in undertaking the study. Firstly, to map the top 20 textile products in demand in major importing countries in comparison to what India is supplying to these markets and thereby analyze reasons for mismatch in demand & supply, if any, and chalk out suitable corrective action to be taken up by the industry.
He also reiterated the importance of finalisation of FTAs with EU, Australia and Canada in addition to negotiation of concessional tariff with China to highlight the impact of business being lost to other competing countries owing to tariff disadvantage faced by the Indian suppliers.
Thirdly, he said that this study was done to clearly bring out the employment potential of the textile sector, especially in rural India by developing non-migratory models of manufacturing like the ‘hub & spoke’ model being popularised in countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia & Myanmar.
The study was done by conducting primary research in various production centres and also by one-to-one meetings with manufacturers and exporters of fabric and home textiles in small, medium and large scale sectors, he said.
