FW
More than 300 readymade garment factories in Bangladesh face the threat of closure since they have failed to make the required remedial progress. Among other steps, their export license may be suspended. Some 3,780 garment factories were assessed for fire, electrical and structural integrity by Accord and Alliance and other initiatives after the Rana Plaza building collapse in April 2013 that killed more than 1,100 people.
Now factories are inspected jointly by experts supported by ILO and the buyers’ platforms Accord and Alliance. Bangladesh now has 67 LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) factories, certified by the United States Green Building Council, of which 13 are platinum. Seven out of world’s top 13 LEED certified factories are in Bangladesh and 280 more are in the pipeline for getting certification. Meanwhile the labor law was amended in July 2013 and another revision of the law is in progress. A workers’ welfare fund has been created to which the garment industry alone contributed around 10 million dollars last fiscal year. Before the Rana Plaza tragedy garment factories focused only on child labor, limiting working hours, wages for overtime duties and on achieving technical compliance like fire extinguishers, gloves, boots, helmets for workers.
"Year 2024 will prove to be a milestone for Bangladesh as the country will graduate from being a Least Developed Country to a developing country. This will bring along a number of new challenges particularly its impact on the readymade garments industry. The industry will have to address issues like: How RMG entrepreneurs can improve their business and marketing? Which initiatives need to be undertaken for technological upgrading, social compliance, labour standards and rights compliance, to address the post-graduation challenges?"
Year 2024 will prove to be a milestone for Bangladesh as the country will graduate from being a Least Developed Country to a developing country. This will bring along a number of new challenges particularly its impact on the readymade garments industry. The industry will have to address issues like: How RMG entrepreneurs can improve their business and marketing? Which initiatives need to be undertaken for technological upgrading, social compliance, labour standards and rights compliance, to address the post-graduation challenges?
As the RMG sector is of paramount importance for Bangladesh’s macroeconomic performance, employment, export earnings and balance of payments, its positive implications in terms of social parameters, and overall, in projecting the ‘Brand Bangladesh’ to the world, answers to these questions are of heightened interest from the perspective of future development of not only the RMG sector, but also the overall performance of the Bangladesh economy.
Bangladesh to lose preferential market access
A major drawback will be that it will lose the preferential market access it currently enjoys due to the various
unilateral, and bilateral, regional and global initiatives. While the EU offers to extend this preferential market access for an additional three years, future market access scenario for the country will change profoundly in coming years.
The implications of Bangladesh’s LDC graduation will be felt more acutely in the RMG sector. RMG, which accounts for more than four-fifths of Bangladesh’s total global export earnings, faces high tariffs in almost all its key markets. For instance, on average apparels from Bangladesh are taxed at 12 per cent in the EU and between 16-18 per cent in the Canadian markets. Accordingly, their depth of preference erosion is significantly high in these markets.
Another disadvantage that Bangladesh faces on graduating to a non-LDC status is that the country will no longer enjoy the preferential status as a member regional trading arrangements such as the South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA). Its exports will also face an additional tariff of about 6.7 percent, on average.
The country’s RMG sector will also be impacted by indirect factors such as implications arising from stringent compliance requirements under the trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) of the WTO, as also from changes in the support regime concerning the enhanced integrated framework (EIF) and the various special and differential treatment provisions of the WTO.
Though minimum wages in the RMG sector will continue to rise,competing development demands and current performance of domestic resource mobilisation will shrink the fiscal space that these types of incentives traditionally enjoyed.
Securing a common ground with other LDCs
To address these challenges, Bangladesh will have to secure common interests with other graduating LDCs. It will also need to design a support package for a sustainable graduation of these LDCs. This package should include targeted initiatives in areas concerning preferences (continuation), aid for trade (additional) and special and differential treatment (in selected areas of interests to these countries), at least for a few additional years.
Bangladesh can also extend preferential treatment under unilateral LDC schemes, such as those run by India and China, for some years following graduation. However, it needs to keep in the purview its future as a non-LDC developing country, and argue in favour of strengthening market access and other special and differential provisions in the WTO in support of the developing countries.
Bangladesh currently is not a part of any bilateral FTAs. To form such FTAs, the country needs to strengthen its analytical and negotiating capacities. It also needs to ensure compliance with the current labor, social, technical, intellectual property rights, environmental standards.
The next few years will provide Bangladesh enough space to design appropriate strategies for its sustainable transition from the LDC category. Concerned stakeholders must demonstrate their ability to address the anticipated post-graduation challenges with a proper homework and prepare for the post-2024 future of the RMG sector with the urgency that the attendant tasks demand.
For the first time, The World Fashion Convention will be held in Lahore, Pakistan. The 35th edition of the event will be held in November 2019 in collaboration with International Apparel Federation (IAF). The mega fashion show will host delegates from over 45 countries.
Several world-renowned speakers, well-known fashion designers, buyers, brands and fashion houses will attend the multi-day mega fashion show featuring panel discussions, lectures and workshops about the textile and garment industry.
The textile associations that will participate in the event include All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA), Pakistan Textile Exporters Association (PTEA), Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers & Exporters Association (PHMA), All Pakistan Textile Processing Mills Association (APTPMA), Pakistan Bedwear Exporters Association, Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) and Towel Manufacturers Association of Pakistan (TMA) etc.
The main focus of the event is to project a positive image of Pakistan before the world leaders. It also aims to shed light on the textiles and apparels produced by the country and allow its exporters to interact with the international textile chain.
Building on a successful first year, PhytoGen, the U.S. cottonseed brand of Corteva Agriscience, will renew its partnership with Cotton Incorporated’s Blue Jeans Go Green denim recycling program for 2020. PhytoGen will organise denim collection drives at industry events across the cotton belt to help promote sustainability and reduce textile waste.
In early 2019, PhytoGen became the first cottonseed company to collaborate with the Blue Jeans Go Green program, an initiative that upcycles denim garments into premium housing insulation and keeps denim out of landfills. PhytoGen collected 7,412 items through donation drives at cotton industry events and company locations in 2019.
Local FFA and 4-H chapters participated by collecting denim in their communities. PhytoGen presented $1,500 to the chapters donating the most denim items at each PhytoGen Blue Jeans Go Green program drive. The winning chapters were Star City FFA (Arkansas), Olton FFA (Texas), Thomas County Middle FFA (Georgia) and La Paz 4-H (Arizona).
In 2020, PhytoGen will hold denim collection drives at the Mid-South Farm & Gin Show, the Texas Cotton Ginners’ Show and the Desert Ag Conference. Prizes will be awarded to the winning FFA or 4-H chapter at each location. But anyone is welcome to participate and drop off denim during the three events.
Tukatech has opened its new TUK Acentre in Bengaluru, India that will bring start-up companies, e-commerce companies, brands, and supply chains on the same platform. The one-stop centre will offer services such as plotting, pattern making, grading, marker making, and sample making, and through to cut and sew and supply chain guidance. Its five-storey building designed for collaboration or private meetings will offer desks and private meeting spaces.
Designed in collaboration with Jagdish Chawla, founder of Design Wolf Studio, this unique centre goes beyond a full-service facility. Fashion professionals can take advantage of apparel CAD, 3D virtual sampling, sample cutting, and sewing. A communal micro-factory concept will assist in the production of small runs.
Tukatech is the garment and apparel industry’s leading provider of end-to-end fashion technology solutions. The TUK Acentres offer a complete array of services for fashion design and development, and the most-advanced fashion technology and industry knowledge for any type of apparel customer.
The new Brazilian initiative, ‘Cotton in Organic Farming Consortium’ will aid approximately 800 farming families by strengthening organic cotton production in seven Brazil states over the next two years.
The initiative is supported by the C&A Foundation along with the NGO Diaconia, Embrapa Algodão and the Fedeal University of Sergipe (UFS). It aims to reinforce the management of the Participatory Conformity Assessment Bodies (OPACs) - associations representing the families of farmers certified to issue the organic product seal.
Though cotton is the fiber most used in the fashion industry, less than 0.1 per cent of Brazilian cotton is organic. Organic cotton does not require toxic chemicals, does not damage the soil, and has a lower impact on the air and uses 71 per cent less water and 62 per cent less energy.
As cotton farming is an important source of income for producers in these regions, the transition from conventional cotton to organic farming is an opportunity to improve the lives of the farmers in Brazil.
Benetton Group and King Features unveiled the new Popeye x Benetton collection at the Milano Fashion week.
The collection is set to launch February 2020. It will be launched as a part of the spring/summer 2020 apparel collaboration featuring the cartoon sailorman.
In addition to Popeye being featured in United Colors of Benetton's spring/summer 2020 collection, the eco-friendly brand has also enlisted Popeye to serve as its environmental ‘green’ ambassador. His image will be put on various apparel pieces aimed at helping support work to protect the oceans. It will appear on t-shirts, dresses and sweatshirts in a variety of digital prints.
This is Popeye’s 90th anniversary. To honor the milestone, it has also been included in various licensing deals including a shaving line partnership.
Levi Strauss & Co. (LS & Co.) is granting more than $380,000 to the second class of the brand’s fellowship program known as Collaboratory. The funding will be used for developing new approaches and innovations in the apparel supply chain that will address issues related to climate change. The projects of the Collaboratory include rescuing excess fabrics to create beautiful clothes designed by award-winning sustainable designers, creating a data platform for garment factories and textile waste recyclers for end-to-end trading and tracing, and reinventing the way goods are sent and received.
The Collaboratory is a fellowship program for social entrepreneurs who see design and sustainability as inextricably linked, and are working to create a more sustainable apparel industry. The program tackles different social and environmental sustainability challenges that are critically important to the future of the apparel industry and the planet. The first Collaboratory class focused on water. This class focused on climate change.
This class of Collaboratory fellows attended a weekend workshop at the company’s Eureka Innovation Lab, where they had the unique opportunity to work through ideas and challenges with its leaders, mentors, and sustainability and apparel industry experts, as they developed concrete, tangible plans for reducing their organisation’s, and the industry’s, climate impact.
Following the Collaboratory workshop weekend, they submitted project proposals focused on innovative and impactful solutions tied to climate change, with the opportunity to receive funding from LS&Co to implement their solutions. The ideas selected represent bold, cutting-edge ideas from leaders who represent the future of the apparel industry.
France-based Brodelec has installed the country’s first-ever Kornit Digital Presto S system for roll-to-roll, pigment-based digital textile printing. This installation will enable the multiservice marking brand to expand its business further into customised décor and on-demand fashion.
Brodelec has partnered with Kornit for over a decade and owns several direct-to-garment print systems. Based on the demand for natural fabrics and blends in the home décor and fashion markets, the brand is now expanding its offerings to include bespoke direct-to-fabric services. Brodelec chose the Kornit Presto S as it is the only single-step solution and the fastest route from design to finished product which makes it the most efficient and eco-friendly fabric printing solution in France today.
The Kornit Presto solution provides high-quality printing for a multitude of fabric types and applications, using a single ink set. The system does not consume water in the printing process which minimises its carbon footprint.
The new Kornit Presto uses the versatile NeoPigment™ Robusto ink set, which provides superior wash and rub results, and exceptional color fastness with significantly shorter curing time and wider color gamut relative to previous and competitive digital pigment inks. Reflecting Kornit’s vigorous commitment to sustainability, Robusto inks are OEKO-TEX® Eco Passport and GOTS certified.
Kornit partners closely with Must Technologies to provide the French textile and garment industries with the latest innovations in digital printing.
Internationally acclaimed "ECOlifestyle" visionary, entrepreneur and author Marci Zaroff has launched a new GOTS certified organic cotton, luxury lifestyle brand Farm to Home®
From fiber to finished product, Farm to Home is fully transparent and adheres to the high level of organic certification from the notable Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS). The modern home collection is GOTS certified as no harmful chemicals while offering superb quality, GOTS certified as sustainable agriculture and affordability.
Farm to Home fuses modern design with high-quality and a commitment to organic products. The collection includes organic sheet sets, organic reversible quilted comfy-lets & shams, organic bath towel sets, organic throws, pillow sets and organic Robes.
