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In a move that should make environmentalists happy, 33 Chinese textile mills have said that they saved $14.7 million by cutting their use of water, electricity and chemical products. These mills are part of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) ‘Clean by Design’ campaign, a global model for manufacturing sustainability to green the fashion supply chain industry-wide. The campaign was responsible for the improvements including a 36 per cent savings in water use, 22 per cent in electricity and no less than 400 tonnes of chemicals.
According to Linda Greer, NRDC senior scientist and director of ‘Clean by Design’, great fashion can also be green fashion. Although apparel manufacturing is among the largest polluting industries in the world, it doesn’t have to be. There are enormous opportunities for the fashion industry to clean up its act while saving money, and Clean By Design offers low-cost, high-impact solutions to do just that, she added.
China has become the epicenter of global manufacturing over the past two decades, and it currently produces more than 50 per cent of the world’s fabric. The country is suffering from increasingly serious pollution problems while also contributing significant carbon into the atmosphere.
The Bread & Butter trade show will take place in Germany from July 7 to 9, 2015. This is a professionals only event without the participation of end consumers. About 120 exhibitors have made use of the early bird rate booking.
The €500 entrance fee for all visitors from neighboring fields such as PR agencies, representatives of the pre-garment textile chain, retail designers, IT companies etc. is history. All those visitors will have free entrance just as all visitors registered for any of the other Berlin fashion trade shows.
The show will occupy 20,000 sq. mt. area in three halls: Hangar 5, 6 and 7. In the main hall (former Urban Base), Bread & Butter will host its Startup concept for which the organisers have received around 150 applications so far. Among the other halls, all focusing on denim, street and urbanwear, there shall be no further segmentation or clustering.
Bread & Butter takes place in January and July each year, parallel to the Berlin Fashion Week. The trade show presents a select brand portfolio including leading original brands and new labels. Additionally, fashion presentations are held. The show’s winter edition is to be held from January 19 to 21, 2016.
www.breadandbutter.com/
Weavers of the state are one of the most backward and neglected sections of society. Weavers will be given facilities and access to financial institutions. Skill development programs will get a boost. There are more than 100 centers where trainees learn about handloom weaving, pashmina weaving, carpet making and readymade garments at a stipend of Rs 500 for elementary and Rs 700 for advance training. There are 503 registered cooperative societies in the handloom sector out of which 257 are functional. There are benefits like reimbursement of 10 per cent rebate on the sale of handloom products and loans under the schemes of the micro credit plan, the weaver credit card, loans for looms and sewing machine and share capital loan schemes. Scholarship is also provided to girl students belonging to weaver families besides social security cover to weavers in the form of health and life insurance schemes.
There are centrally sponsored schemes like the integrated handloom development scheme, comprehensive handloom development scheme, and the marketing and export promotion scheme. Handloom clusters are also being run. There is a huge demand for Jammu and Kashmir handlooms and handicrafts worldwide.
Germany’s functional textile company Sympatex Technologies has joined the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC). SAC has more than 150 global brands, retailers and manufacturers as its members, among them adidas, C&A, Gap, H&M, Nike, Puma, Target and VF Corporation.
Sympatex will use the SAC's sustainability measurement tool, the Higg Index, to drive environmental responsibility across its supply chain. The Higg index is an open source, indicator-based tool that allows suppliers, manufacturers, brands and retailers to evaluate materials, products, facilities and processes based on environmental and product design choices.
The Sympatex membrane production method uses a material made from polyether and polyester, involving no use of polytetrafluoroethylene or fluorocarbons that are often found in textile membrane materials, while the un-dyed membrane is bluesign certified as 100 per cent recyclable post-consumer.
The Sustainable Apparel Coalition is a trade organization comprising brands, retailers, manufacturers, government, and non-governmental organizations and academic experts, representing more than a third of the global apparel and footwear market. The coalition is working to reduce the environmental and social impact of apparel and footwear products around the world.
The Higg index is a suite of assessment tools that standardizes the measurement of the environmental and social impact of apparel and footwear products across the product lifecycle and throughout the value chain.
www.apparelcoalition.org/
Karl Mayer has a new machine in the MJ series, the MJ 59/1 S. The S in the machine designation stands for stitch forming and indicates that the machine has a new configuration.
Karl Mayer is a leading warp knitting machinery manufacturer. A leader in knitting elements, the new machine has a stitch-forming jacquard bar and not the normal pillar-stitch-forming ground guide bar. The fabric ground is therefore, produced exclusively by the split jacquard bar. The characteristic appearance features a perfectly symmetrical, regular net pattern, worked on the basis of a powernet lapping.
Other patterns possibilite are the result of the machine having 20 more guide bars compared to the JL 40 F jacquardtronic lace version. Fabric produced on the MJ 59/1 S can be produced in a lower weight than is normally typical for jacquardtronic lace and, in a gauge of E 28, has a fine, filigree appearance.
Another machine is the HKS 4-M, which is setting new standards for four-bar HKS machines in terms of speed. This new high-speed model can reach up to 25 per cent higher speeds than its predecessor. It is mainly the knitting movement that has been modified to enable it to do so. The HKS 4-M can be fitted with N or EL pattern drive and with a drive for feeding elastane.
www.karlmayer.com/
The textile industries of India and Vietnam can cooperate for mutual benefit. With its large population, India is a potential export market for Vietnam garment industry. Vietnam has a large Indian population with a high demand for fashion.
Despite achieving impressive growth in garment and textile exports, Vietnam relies heavily on imported raw materials. Vietnam’s main imports of textile products from India are polyester viscose and synthetic fabrics, polyester wool fabrics, and polyester filament yarn.
The Indian government has endorsed a credit program to promote India-Vietnam garment cooperation worth $300 million. Based on this program, the two sides are considering the establishment of the first Indian garment industrial zone in Vietnam. Indian businesses can concentrate their production lines with the best infrastructure system access, reducing production costs while supplying materials for Vietnamese enterprises with updated technology, best quality and highly competitive prices.
The credit package will not only help Indian businesses develop factories there but also stimulate Vietnamese companies to expand cooperation with Indian partners. The successful development of such a garment industrial zone will serve as a strong basis for the establishment of another industrial zone in Vietnam.
Germany-based flat knitting machine builder, Stoll, is keen to boost business of technical textiles such as footwear and will participate at Techtextil exhibition to be held in May. Booth C19 in Hall 3 in the exhibition will display Stoll’s products.
As per Stoll CEO Andreas Schellhammer, with the development of knitted football boots technology has shown its importance. A couple of years ago, no-one was talking about knitted sports shoes but look now at what the biggest two names in the industry are producing. There is a lot of hype and fantasy about what knitting machines can do but it’s important to find the products that can really offer commercial growth.
With a knitting width of 50 inches, the 3-system CMS ADF-3 continues to perform well in an intensely competitive market mainly due to these broad areas of applications. The CMS ADF-3 covers a gauge range from E 10 to E 18, including multi-gauge technology. The CMS ADF-3 is based on 32 motorized yarn carriers. These carriers move independently from the carriage and can position themselves vertically or horizontally. Positioning is controlled by the pattern programme with these configurations opening up almost unlimited possibilities for the user regarding patterns and color combinations. This makes CMS ADF-3 versatile.
When it comes to plating, the benefits of flexible yarn carriers are particularly noticeable as its inverse plating allows you to create any conceivable colour combination. With intarsia plating, color nuances can be added to individual or multiple pattern areas. The CMS ADF-3 also enables color fields of less than 1" to be knitted.
Stoll also highlights the machine’s efficiency, which is boosted by more effective knitting sequences that reduce the stroke. Faster retrofitting times when changing patterns lower the machine’s downtimes considerably. Even its ergonomic improvements have generated several benefits for the user who work with the machine on a daily basis.
The Stoll enterprise is the integrative link between the highly sophisticated technology in the area of developing and manufacturing flat knitting machines on the one hand and an innovative independent thinker and developer in the section of fashion and technology on the other hand.
Pakistan's textile and garments exports declined by 16.23 per cent in March 2015 compared with the previous year. Exports of cotton yarn declined 29.36 per cent in value and 12.99 per cent in quantity terms, followed by cotton cloth (14.45 per cent in value and 37.57 per cent in quantity terms), bed wear (16.94 per cent in value and 15.15 per cent in quantity terms), towels (19.03 per cent in value and 23.51 per cent in quantity terms), garments (5.20 per cent in value and 12.57 per cent in quantity terms), synthetics (24.87 per cent in value and 32.99 per cent in quantity terms) and made-us (13.62 per cent in value terms).
Knitwear is the only product having registered a 28.53 per cent growth in quantity terms but it has also declined by 7.41 per cent in value terms.
Pakistan’s textile industry has lost its comparative advantage to regional competitors on account of high cost of energy, finance and wages, technology and raw material disadvantages, system inefficiencies, opportunity cost of funds withheld by the government and zero investment incentives. Since textile mills have been closing down one after another, 30 per cent of the capacity across the textile value chain has been lost.
Monique Maissan, Founder and CEO of 'Vision Textiles', says the Chinese company is on an expansion drive in India as the initial reaction for products made from recycled pet (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles has been good in India, especially in the making of children’s school uniforms. The company is in discussion with possible investors to scale up business in the country. It’s also looking for partners.
Maissan further said that Vision Textiles, which sells garments under the Waste2Wear brand in India, is working with TARA looms in Delhi for setting up a new project – Waste2Weave in India. It is aimed at developing new fabrics and handloom techniques to empower women.
Directors of Vision Textiles (India operations), Rajvanti S and PT Mani, said that the company sources yarn from units located elsewhere in India, blends it with cotton or polyester for making the fabric and ultimately stitching the garment. They ensure that the yarn is made from recycled pet bottles.
The entire product range of Vision Textiles is displayed at the garment making unit at Kalapatti (Coimbatore) including sportswear, ladies dresses, upholstery and curtains.
Turkey denim manufacturer Orta Anadolo and Garmon Chemicals have joined forces to be the first in the industry to apply the GreenScreen chemical hazard screening methodology on denim fabrics. The two companies used the Amsterdam Denim Days event to make the launch. The pair have pioneered a breakthrough approach to a new breed of highly conscious denim materials.
GreenScreen for safer chemicals is a publicly available and transparent chemical hazard screening method developed by the NGO Clean Production Action to help society move quickly and effectively toward the use of greener and safer chemicals. It’s an assessing methodology purely based on toxicology and aimed at identifying safer chemicals.
Garmon wants to change the paradigm and believes that, in order to meet customers’ expectations, better insight into chemical formulations is needed, rather than focusing on which chemicals to restrict. The methodology has been adopted in different fields already, including electronics with Hewlett Packard and Sony, but this will be the first for the apparel industry, and for denim in particular.
Greenscreen is the biggest and the most demanding toxicology standard that is known in the world and it’s being put to fashion. Game-changing business transformations are starting to take place in the apparel industry. These changes are driven by an increasing pressure coming from public opinion asking the textile industry for a more ethical approach.
