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Mexico will not be left out in the dark if the US decides to call it quits on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Mexico has been working to put its eggs in baskets other than the one belonging to the United States. The country could reach a framework for a trade deal with the European Union in the next two weeks provided both sides can reach accord on things like agriculture exports, investment dispute settlement and rules of origin.
NAFTA talks have been tied up largely over US demands to up the input of American raw materials in cars. Mexico and the EU already have an agreement that has cut tariffs on goods like cars and machinery since 2000, and both sides agreed in 2015 to deepen their trade relationship. If this deal goes forward, it would free up trade in sectors like e-commerce and agriculture. But mostly it would lessen Mexico’s dependence on the US.
Apart from cozying up to the EU, Mexico and Canada have vowed to keep NAFTA going even if the US bows out. Mexico has also been in discussions with China about a trade deal. The EU has also been expanding its trade relations and is in talks for a deal with Japan and Canada.
Advance Denim uses Invista fibre science to create international demand for its quality fabrics. Leading Asian, European and US brands source from this 30-year-old Chinese producer, because of its assured quality and fabric innovation. Advance Denim’s General Manager Wang Zongwen attributes the company’s success to their strategic partner INVISTA. She says, the market insights it shares and the innovative technologies in its portfolio have helped them to achieve one breakthrough after another on their way to becoming one of the world’s most innovative producers of high quality denim. The productive partnership between the two began in year 2000 following the development of fabrics incorporating the benefits of Lycra T400 fibre.
Advance Denim was first to market a generation of products that introduced Asian consumers to new standards of comfort, superior performance and wear characteristics. Continuous process improvements over the next two decades led to the 2016 launch of 360° bi-stretch fabrics that use Lycra dualFX technology. Advance Denim enabled its brand and retail customers to set new standards in Asian markets and its international reach had grown to help meet demand for better differentiated products worldwide.
Advance Denim is a 100 per cent specifier of Lycra elastane products and a member of Lycra Exchange, a strategic partnership program that enables close collaboration between Invista and a selected mills who share its commitment to creating consumer access to the benefits of state-of-the-art fabrics.
It began with cotton cultivation, over the years the Turkish textile segment has become an export industry. The export of Turkish yarn and fibre products has increased in recent years following huge investments made in the industry. Turkey is among the most important producers of cotton as well as yarn manufacturing and processing countries in the world. The yarn industry continues to increase its value of exports with value-added products such as customised, high-performance products and eco-friendly yarns.
Given this background, the 15th International Istanbul Yarn Fair is set to open its doors from April 14-17, 2018 at the Tüyap Fair Convention and Congress Centre where it will bring the yarn and fibre industries together. Participants who wish to export their goods to Europe and worldwide will get a chance to showcase their innovations and establish new partnerships as well as strengthen the image of their brand.
Visitors will have the opportunity to view cotton yarn, combed cotton yarn, polyester yarn, acrylic yarns, woollen yarn, fibres and many other kinds of yarn from different parts of the world as well as meet suppliers. To be held with the participation of the world’s leading manufacturers of textile machinery, ITM 2018 - International Textile Machinery Exhibition will take place on the same dates as the International Istanbul Yarn Fair between.
Zimbabwe’s clothing industry is being weighed down by an influx of cheap imports and shrinking markets. The industry employs just 7000 people.
A budget proposal to increase duty on cotton fabrics to 30 per cent is seen as a wrong move. The fear is that this would lead to an increase in the cost of production of a garment by about 50 per cent to 60 per cent rendering the local manufacturer as totally uncompetitive.
Textile companies in Zimbabwe don’t have the foreign currency for importing raw materials.
The country is facing a serious shortage of foreign currency. US dollars are being sold in the black market at exorbitant rates.
Textile production has been greatly affected. Units can’t access the foreign currency needed for importing vital raw materials such as yarn, dyes and chemicals.
The apparel sector in Zimbabwe currently operates at less than 30 per cent of its capacity. Zimbabwe is flooded with cheap textile and apparel imports from Asian countries, especially from China. These low-priced textile and apparel imports have had a negative impact on the manufacturing sector in Zimbabwe. Textile and apparel manufacturers want a ban on imports of cheap polyester knitted fabric and finished blankets.
Swedish clothing giant Hennes & Mauritz has said that their sales dropped below expectations in Q4 and correspondingly it would close more stores as customers preferences have moved towards shopping online. H&M CEO Karl-Johan Persson said in a statement that the company’s “online sales and sales of the group’s other brands continued to develop well” but that brick-and-mortar stores “were negatively affected by a continued challenging market situation with reduced footfall to stores due to the on-going shift in the industry.” Sales between September and November fell by four per cent as against the same period last year to 50.4 billion kronor (5.0 billion euros, $5.9 billion).
In local currency, sales dropped by two per cent. ”The numbers are really, really bad,” Joakim Bornold, an economist at the investment bank Nordnet, was reported to have said, “I can’t remember when H&M had a quarter in which the sales fell,” he added. In order to respond even quicker to customers’ fast-changing behaviour, the company’s on-going transformation journey is being accelerated,” Persson said. This includes continued integration of the physical and digital stores and intensifying the optimisation of the H&M brand’s store portfolio — leading to more store closure and fewer openings.
The textile chemical market in Europe is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 4.20 per cent between 2014 and 2020. Growing demand for hometech, mobiltech and clothtech chemicals will propel the market. The European textile chemical market is categorized into finishing agents, coating and sizing chemicals, colorants and auxiliaries, surfactants, bleaching agents, desizing agents, and yarn lubricants. Coating and sizing chemicals are the largest segment. However, the finishing agents segment is expected to display the fastest growth owing to the growing demand for high-quality fabrics.
On the basis of application, the market is segmented into indutech, sportech, mobiltech, buildtech, hometech, meditech, clothtech, protech, agrotech, packtech, and others including geotech and oekotech. Mobiltech accounts for a 25 per cent market share. The growth of the segment can be attributed to its extensive demand from industries such as railways, automotives, spacecraft, ships, and aircraft. Agrotech is expected to be the most rapidly developing application segment by 2020 owing to the extensive use of agrotech chemicals in horticulture, forestry, landscape gardening, floriculture, and agriculture. A rapid increase in the number of organic farms in Europe will further fuel the demand for agrotech chemicals.
However, growing environmental concerns will restrain the overall market. Some textile chemicals are also known to be carcinogenic. This has led to the emergence of bio-based alternatives that will hinder the growth of the market.
The digital printing market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.48 per cent between 2017 and 2023. Growing demand for sustainable printing, development of packaging and textile industries worldwide, and reduction in per unit cost of printing with digital printers are expected to drive the growth of the digital printing market worldwide.
The ink market for digital printing is expected to hold the largest share of the digital printing market between 2017 and 2023. The overall digital printing market includes the digital printer market, ink market for digital printing, and print head market. The ink market for digital printing has the largest share of the overall market owing to its extensive benefits in digital printing, since they are waterproof and UV-resistant, and do not have any significant environmental impact.
UV-cured ink is expected to hold the largest share between 2017 and 2023. UV-cured ink for digital printing is the fastest-growing segment, which offers various advantages such as quick drying, environment-friendly, low price, and resistance to UV rays, which are very important for printing on plastics, textiles, and others. As a result, UV-cured ink is increasingly replacing solvent ink despite being more expensive. North America held the largest share of the digital printing market in 2016.
The industry will be coming together from September 20 to 23, 2018 at the Clothing Machinery Fair to be held at Tüyap Fair Convention and Congress Center. The show will attract manufactures of state-of-the-art, efficient and sophisticated machinery from Turkey and worldwide. The fair will permit clothing manufacturers that implement new technologies and care about design development to compare machinery alternatives and guide new investment decisions.
Participating companies will be able to expand their international network and display their brand value to the world. Organised to provide clothing manufacturers a platform, this fair will give visitors the opportunity to see cutting-edge sewing machines that drive the imagination with their compact, easy-to-use features. An integral part of fashion in recent years, embroidery machines used in embroidery work, especially for home textiles, underwear and outerwear, will be showcased. Designers who wish to create high-quality embroidery quickly and easily will have the chance to closely examine machinery that incorporates latest technology.
Businesses that like to minimize downtime through speed and automation will find the opportunity to compare computerised ironing machines that can multitask and deliver all requirement of the clothing industry; specially tricot ironing machines, clothing ironing machines and steam generators will be available under the same roof. An entire selection of computer-aided pattern making software used in the ready-made clothing industry will be brought together. These machines provide savings in printmaking and materials and will help companies in the industry to increase their competitiveness.
Well known for its application oriented textile and engineering education and close ties with the textile industry, DKTE Society’s Textile and Engineering Institute, Ichalkaranji has won prestigious ‘Best Industry-Linked Technical Institute-2017 Award’ in the nation-wide survey jointly conducted by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII). This is the second time that DKTE won this coveted award. The objective of the survey was to assess and reward the institutes with good industry interaction.
Around 9,525 colleges across the country had shown interest in the survey. The entire process was online where institutes were asked to fill in all the data of their curriculum, faculty, infrastructure, placements, governance and research and services for the year 2015-16 and 2016-17. Post generating objective scores for the full survey, screening and shortlisting was done by an eminent jury comprising experts from industry and academia. DKTE emerged as the winner in Chemical and Allied Engineering Institute category in this survey
The jury was impressed by the commendable progress made by the institute in the area of training, placements and MOUs with industries. They were also impressed by the 100 per cent placement record, training in industries of textile graduates for the last 35 years. The research and publications of faculty and students, state of the art equipment worth 50 crores, intensive interaction with industries and alumni, MOUs with national and international industries and universities, seminars, workshops and training programmes organised and 100% placement of students for the last 35 years impressed the jury members. This was mentioned in the survey report published by AICTE-CII.
The faculty members are deeply engaged in carrying out research sponsored by industry as well as in-house research. As a result of this, as many as 650 research papers have been published / presented by the faculty members in reputed national and international journals as well as in important national and international conferences.
The Pakistan Ready - made Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PRGMEA) has asked for a relaxation of duties on import of yarn to encourage value addition, reduce the cost of doing business and bridge the gap between production and consumption. Its demand arises post the government’s decision to withdraw sales tax and customs duty on the import of cotton to help spinning mills.
The association has requested the textile division to submit a summary to the Economic Coordination Com¬mit¬¬tee of the cabinet for duty relaxation on the import of yarn. PRGMEA’s chief coordinator, Ijaz Khokhar said, “The government will have to provide a level playing field to the whole textile chain instead of supporting only yarn manufacturers which have around 350 units against the value-added sector comprising 10,000 units across the country.”
Khokhar said the government is going to facilitate cotton imports despite the fact that around 1.86 million bales of cotton are lying unsold in the country. Thus, it must remove restrictions on yarn imports too, he added. Since the apparel sector has already a very limited production line owing to a lack of latest fabric varieties at the local level, harsh duties are resulting in a significant decline in apparel exports. The apparel industry is already suffering from low productivity due to a shortage of cotton yarn, high energy cost and discriminating import duties on the its raw material. He is of the view high-quality cotton yarn has to be imported for the production of value-added products.
