FW
Cotton prices edged up in the third week of February on fresh demand from domestic yarn mills after prices declined in the previous week. Cotton yarn prices climbed during the week with offers regaining in Ludhiana while remaining flat in Indore. The rise explains the rebound in cotton prices, after progressively declining in the past weeks.
In Pakistan, cotton market eased a bit as leading spinners were away from the proceedings. A slump in cotton yarn and fabric markets depressed cotton trade, and leading spinners have already imported a substantial quantity of cotton. Cotton yarn prices in Pakistan mostly rolled over after cotton prices were revised down on the week due to poor demand. Eights and 30s carded yarn for weaving prices remained unchanged during the week.
The China cotton index fell 89 yuan to 12,219 yuan a ton on the week while cotton yarn markets witnessed scattered transactions, as many players were yet to resume operations, back from the holidays. Major producers were in slow recovery and most held a bearish outlook over future trends. Thus cotton yarn markets saw thin trades and transactions are likely to recover by the end of the month.
Logistics major Safexpress has partnered with this year’s edition of public art festival PUBLICA, an art initiative that involves top Indian and international artists create site-specific works.
Divya Jain, Founder & CEO of Safeducate says, the group’s supply chain training institute that the public art festival will involve the creation of a very unique artwork, where an artist will spend two weeks in a truck container, painting it and making it the canvas for his expression. Trucks are rarely the subject of casual conversation, unless of course one is voicing their many negatives. This extraordinary project, however, seeks to change that. It seeks to capture the beauty and the dreams that a mere truck container can evoke leaving the staunchest among us incredulous and hopefully, believers. This incredible project of converting a truck container into a piece of art has been conceptualized by Divya Jain.
As per the plan, Safexpress will place their truck container at a select city mall at New Delhi. Here renowned artist Bhuwal Prasad, who has previously exhibited at the 6th Beijing International Art Biennale, will create his latest masterpiece live on the theme of ‘Go Green.’ The container itself is a unique green innovation by Safexpress Group, wherein they have been continuously refurbishing old, end-of-life containers to develop mobile Container Schools. According to Jain, they are creating a mobile artwork, which will spread the vital message about conserving our resources and saving our environment.
Incidentally, Safexpress has been driving its ‘Go Green with Safexpress’ campaign for the last decade. They have educated millions about the importance of going green and have helped countless firms develop a Green Supply Chain.
The agitation in Haryana has hit Surat’s polyester fabric trade. Over 300 trucks, loaded with textile fabrics including saris and dress materials that were on their way to Delhi, Haryana and Punjab, were turned back due to widespread incidents of violence and arson. Surat traders have stopped taking delivery orders from markets in North India. Surat is India’s largest manmade fabric hub.
Most buyers in North India have cancelled their orders as they don’t want to take chances. A textile trader was supposed to deliver saris worth Rs 40 lakh to Haryana and Amritsar, but the orders were cancelled by buyers following the violence. North India is the largest market for manmade fabrics manufactured in Surat. Saris and dress materials worth around Rs 45 crores are transported to Delhi, Punjab and Haryana every day. More than 500 transport trucks are loaded from the city’s textile markets and sent to various places in north India.
North India is an important market for the textile sector. The sector has been passing through a tough phase and was hoping that the marriage season would come to its rescue. But those hopes have now been dashed.
Bangladesh is seen as a top sourcing destination but Africa looks likely to emerge as a serious competitor. Right now sub-Saharan Africa has only a 0.56 per cent share of the total global capacity of apparel exports. A significant proportion of buyers are preparing to reduce their sourcing from China, where in recent years, production costs have gone up because of rising labor costs. They are glancing at Ethiopia and Kenya as potential choices. Some 40 per cent of buyers say sub-Saharan Africa will become more significant to the clothing business in the next five years in contrast to 24 per cent who said this in 2013.
Sourcing from sub-Saharan Africa is expected to rise almost tenfold by 2020, from 0.3 per cent to 2.8 per cent. As of now, Bangladesh is the second biggest apparel exporter after China. Bangladesh has a five per cent share in world apparel exports but China has a 39 per cent share. Bangladesh feels that African countries will take time to pose competition as they have yet to make a serious beginning. In the meantime the country is building on its strengths. Apparently the retailers’ groupings Accord and Alliance have certified more than 98 per cent of factories in Bangladesh as safe and capable of continuing operations.
Following the European Union’s (EU) decision not to suspend Pakistan’s ‘Generalised Scheme of Preferences plus’ (GSP+), status despite concerns about its human rights record Pakistan’s textile producers will continue to benefit from EU preferential tariffs. GSP+ has been beneficial to Pakistan’s textile industry - textiles and clothing account for around 75 per cent of Pakistan’s exports to the EU. The GSP+ benefits allow 80 per cent of Pakistani textile and clothing imports to enter the EU at preferential tariffs. Items include table and bed linen, as well as many fabric lines and clothing products.
There were concerns that the country could lose its EU trading privileges after the EU ambassador to Pakistan, Jean-Francois Cautain, was quoted last year as saying such a move could not be ruled out. Countries enjoying GSP+ status must comply with 27 international conventions, covering human and labour rights, environmental protection and good governance.
Fashion is staying in the realm of nostalgia, with denim the must-have trend of the new season. It’s not just the enviable street stylers of Instagram who are showcasing the veteran fabric. From Prada to Victoria Beckham, denim is having its moment on the catwalk. During the past few seasons the blue siren has been sneaking in through the trends of dungarees, double denim and the forever sibling rivalry of skinny jean versus boyfriend, girlfriend and flares.
This season, however, denim which is potent symbol of youth and rebellion is all grown up by making a move away from the distressed feel of the grunge era. It’s time to take the perennial trend seriously. Meanwhile, designers tap into our love of all things nostalgic, they have reinvented this most hardworking of fabrics making it fresh for the 21st century.
Giving denim the ultra seal of fashion approval is the socialite, street style star and all round uber fashionista Olivia Palermo. In keeping with the seasons fresh approach, Palermo’s collection gives the traditionally casual material a more formal feel, she used it to create a high-waisted midi skirt with a centre slit, a tailored jumpsuit, aka dungarees, and a pair of wide-legged cropped pants with a braided waistband.
Cotton not only accounts for roughly a third of the world’s textile consumption but is also in danger of becoming a scarce resource as the world’s increasing population needs more land for food production. European brands have taken to making garments made entirely from recycled cotton. The technology allows them to recycle all materials that contain cellulose.
Old cotton clothes are brought to a factory and shredded and then turned into a porridge-like substance. After non-recyclable pieces like zippers and buttons have been removed, the porridge is broken down to the molecule level and turned into a fiber substance to be used for thread, resulting in rayon fabric. It is possible to recycle fabrics that contain a mix of cotton and other materials but the best results are got when recycling pure cotton.
From a sustainability perspective, cotton recycling scores particularly well as it uses no new ingredients other than timber, whose cellulose fibers can be added to the existing cotton ones.
But recycling of fabric often involves dangerous materials such as heavy metals. And because rayon is much harder to recycle than cotton, the recycling doesn’t go full circle. A better approach would be to compost the clothes. Valuable nutrients could be added to clothes, which would benefit the soil when they are composted.
The Turkish textile and ready-made clothing sectors are set to make up for their losses, since bilateral political relations were strained with Russia, by opening up to Iranian and African markets. With signals of financial weakening in Russia, as importers did not purchase enough goods in the beginning of the new season, Turkish textile exporters have planned road shows in Iran, Ghana, Nigeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria in March.
According to Giyasettin Eyüpkoca, President, Laleli Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association (LASİAD), economic recession is being experienced not only in Russia but also in other countries such as Italy, France and the United Kingdom. He stressed that road shows bring more advantages than fairs to the ready-made clothing sector. Eyüpkoca added that Pure London and Magic Show fashion events, which were recently held in the UK and the United States, respectively, were not efficient enough.
Said Hikmet Eraslan, Dosso Dossi Holding Chairman, the sector has failed to increase its turnover despite reducing prices by 30 percent in the Laleli and Osmanbey shopping areas, which are popular shopping spots for Russian tourists in Istanbul. He underscored how essential it is to find alternative markets.
China’s sportswear market will surpass luxury goods market by 2020. It see double digit growth each year compared with the luxury market's single digit growth in the same period. The sports sector contributes 0.67 per cent of China’s total gross domestic product compared with 2.2 per cent in the European Union and 3.5 per cent in the United States.
Extreme sports apparel and expensive active wear are in vogue ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics in China. The market is also forecast to grow with the country’s decision to relax its one-child policy after 36 years, and companies from the US and Canada are lining up to cash in. Some Chinese come to weddings in active wear. A growing fitness craze saw 134 marathon and road-running races held across the country last year up 160 per cent from 2014. It’s estimated that by 2025, more than 9,00,000 stadiums and gyms will have been built across the country.
China’s slowest economic growth in 25 years has forced China's elite to change their spending habits. Some of the money once spent on French wine and Italian leather now appears to be flowing into high-end heart-rate monitors and running shoes.
Cotton farmers in Pakistan are in distress and want a bailout package. They say if this is not provided on time they will switch to other crops, and this will reduce the area under cotton cultivation by 20 per cent and bring down production. The main reason behind the cotton collapse has been due to substandard imported seeds. These came under pest attacks. There was no spray available to kill the pink bollworm, which destroyed 60 per cent of the crop.
Reduced cotton prices at home and on the international market have proved to be another disincentive for the millions of farmers depending on cotton crop as they continue to pay heavy input prices. Persistent rains this season, restricted the use of pesticides resulting in a sharp fall in output.
Cotton is the mainstay of Pakistan’s economy. A shortage of cotton is expected to hit the textile sector which in turn will be forced to import cotton by drawing on forex reserves. Textile and cotton exports help Pakistan earn $12 billion a year and provide jobs to a huge section of the population.
Pakistan is the fourth largest producer of cotton in the world and has the third largest spinning capacity in Asia (after China and India) with thousands of ginning and spinning units producing textile products from cotton.
