FW
Nandan Denim plans to raise Rs 100 crores through a warrants issue to foreign investors to fund its expansion. Apart from expansion, the funds will also be used for investment in proposed subsidiaries, meeting long-term working capital requirements and improving the capital structure. Nandan’s existing portfolio of investors are: LTS Investment Fund and LGOF Global Opportunities, will be investing. The company will be issuing 25 lakh warrants to them.
The company is planning to issue 50 lakh convertible warrants on a preferential basis to foreign investors at Rs 200 each including a premium of Rs 190. Ahmedabad-based Nandan Denim expanded its capacity from six million meters per annum to 110 million meters per annum over the last 12 years. The company, a fabric maker, is part of the diversified conglomerate Chiripal Group, which was established in 1972. The group is engaged in businesses including textiles, chemicals, packaging, infrastructure and education. Over the years, the magnitude of the operations of the company has increased manifold.
Nandan Denim’s revenue increased to Rs 300.50 crores in the quarter ended June 30 against Rs 280.51 crores in the same period last year. Its net profit rose marginally to Rs 15.97 crores in the last quarter from Rs 15.61 crores in the year-ago period.
The Los Angeles International Textile Show that ran from September 26 to 28 at the California Market Center drew diverse crowd. Among the attendees were representatives from Karen Kane, Trina Turk, Joie, Halston, BCBG, Bailey44, Black Halo, Guess, Calvin Rucker, Current/Elliot, David Meister, Alo Yoga among others. Besides local attendees, visitors from as far as New York and Canada were also part of the show.
This was the first time in several years that Tricot Liesse was at the show. The Montreal-based company makes high-end knits for upscale brands including many in the swimsuit market. Designer Nathalie Camier says the company recently hired a new Los Angeles–based sales representative Leslie B. Lesh and came to the conclusion that it was a good time to return to the textile show. He said sourcing fabrics from Montreal could be a good fit for U.S. companies looking for faster deliveries than China.
At the Buhler Quality Yarns booth, Victor Almeida, textile engineer and P.J. McCord, director of sales for the Americas were fielding a lot of questions about the Jefferson, Ga.–based yarn spinner’s products. Buhler produces higher-end yarns made from premium fibers such as Supima, Tencel and Micro Modal.
Following talks of withdrawal of the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to its neighbor, India is likely to stop $782-million worth of cotton exports to Pakistan with exporters keen to divert shipment to other cotton scarce countries. Way back in 1996, India had granted MFN status to Pakistan to enhance trade between the two nuclear neighbours which Pakistan never reciprocated.
A meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was scheduled to be held on Thursday in New Delhi to reconsider MFN status that Pakistan enjoys for around 20 years. But the meeting got postponed and is now rescheduled for next week. According to trade sources, India exported around two million bales of cotton to Pakistan in 2015-16. This constituted over 10 per cent of overall exports of the natural fibre from India. Pakistan’s cotton imports from India jumped sharply in 2015-16 due to crop failure there.
While cotton exports from India attract zero duty due to surplus availability of the natural fibre in Pakistan but India’s neighbouring country gets a favourable treatment under the MFN status to which Indian exporters prioritise shipment. However, with India most likely to withdraw MFN status to Pakistan, Indian cotton exporters are readying to divert their cotton shipment to other countries including Bangladesh, China, Taiwan among others.
Going a step further, Indian cotton traders have decided not to participate in the 75th plenary meeting of International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC). The meeting is scheduled to be held from October 30 to November 4 in Islamabad.
India and China, the two most populated countries in the world, would turn out to be the most coveted markets by 2030, says a study. As the current global economic trend moves towards the next decade, it is becoming clear that the US would be replaced by China as the world’s biggest apparel market while India will not be far behind. An in depth analysis of both China and India reveals that consumer’s changing perception and increasing awareness for sustainable fashion and natural fibres is the cause of the progress made by the two countries.
According to a study by Fung Global Retail & Technology, consumer spending trend remains high for kids’ wear and casual wear categories. On the other hand, recent reports by Nielsen Global Survey of Consumer Confidence showed India’s confidence is up three points from the previous quarter. China’s positive economic outlook might result from its ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative, an economic and diplomatic programe that calls for major investment in the region’s trade routes. In a recent McKinsey podcast, senior partner Kevin Sneader explained that there were two parts to this: the belt and the road. While the belt is the physical road which takes one from Zurich all the way through Europe to somewhere up north in Scandinavia, the road is actually the maritime Silk Road which in other words are shipping lanes essentially from Zurich to Venice.
Therefore it’s very ambitious, covering about 65 per cent of the world’s population, about one-third of the world’s GDP and about a quarter of all the goods and services the world moves. The $100 billion initiative would help fuel growth for China after its economy has seen a period of slowing down.
On the other hand, India witnessed significant growth in organised retail driven by increasing consumer preference for specialty, department and hypermarkets and increasing lifestyle spend. Over the last decade, almost all global brands have made a beeline for India market changing the retail landscape of the country. An Indian Consumer survey ‘Fully’, 73 per cent say that they could spend the rest of their life in the fibre.
German scientists have developed a textile finish that provides a sensory cooling effect. The textile finish is based on p-menthane derivatives (agonists) such as WS-3 (N-ethyl-p-menthane-3-carboxamide) or L-menthyl lactate and icilin. These substances have the advantage when spread in low concentrations on small areas of the body, they have a lasting and mild cooling effect.
Sensory cooling is the term used to describe a chemically induced sensation of coolness on the skin, due to the triggering of cold receptors at the nerve ends close to the surface of the skin. This is different from the cooling effect normally achieved by physical processes where the skin is cooled mainly by the evaporation of water.
Unlike conventional cooling methods, cold-inducing substances that result in sensory cooling have a mild cooling effect, even when spread over a large area, without over-cooling the skin. One example of this would be the peppermint substance menthol. This has a cooling effect and soothes itching.
Sensory cooling textiles are effective in textiles worn close to the skin, but are unsuitable for loosely cut clothing that is not in direct contact with the body. The sensory perception of cold depends not only on the area of the skin being treated but also on a range of other parameters such as the moisture level in the skin and the topography of the skin surface.
Weavers in a remote village in North Dinajpur district of West Bengal have been stitching Banarasi-style carpets for around three decades, but with little recognition. Only recently, the West Bengal Directorate of Textiles decided to set up a mega carpet cluster at Malgaon village in Kaliaganj block where hand-woven carpets are being made since the middle of 1980s. As of now, around 300 women weave carpets in the village as members of Malgaon Handloom Cluster Development Society, formed in 2009.
The society's president Siddique Hossain says five European experts were recently brought to Malgaon by a Kolkata-based export organisation and they were highly impressed with the quality of carpets weaved there. It was the effort of Abu Taher, a resident of Malgaon who took interest in carpet weaving during a visit to Varanasi in 1978 and brought the technical knowledge back to his village. By 1985-86, he passed on the acquired knowledge to the children of Malgaon, though there was hardly any market for these carpets in the area.
Later in 2009, women of self-help groups were trained in the art and Malgaon Handloom Cluster Development Society was formed. The District Industries Centre now makes arrangements to send these carpets to various handicraft fairs across the country fetching modest income for the weavers sometimes.
In a move that failed to satisfy either the garment workers’ unions or the manufacturers, the Cambodian government has agreed to raise the minimum wage for clothing and footwear workers by about 9 per cent. Just yesterday, the ministry of labour, vocational and training announced that the minimum wage for the crucial sector of Cambodia’s economy would rise to $153 per month beginning next year. Currently the minimum wage of workers is $140.
While the increase falls short of the $171-a-month wage proposal pushed by the unions, the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) fears that the increase is high and will damage the country’s ability to compete with other lower-wage countries. As a matter of fact, the manufactures wanted wages of $147-per-month.
While the GMAC says that increase is on the higher side, the President of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Unions (C.CAWDU), Ath Thon said that they will stick to their $171-per-month demand. Wages in Cambodia remain low by international standards, largely because of pressures to compete with other low-cost production centers such as Bangladesh and Vietnam.
In 2015, the Southeast Asian country shipped nearly $7 billion worth of products to the United States and Europe.
Two computer engineers from Bangladesh have developed a microcomputer-embedded jacket. The idea is to better connect all devices and outsource the computing power and storage to cloud jacket, meaning individual devices can be dumber and therefore less expensive. The cloud and the dump terminal devices can communicate with each other over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi network connectivity.
Users can create a hyper-cloud, a much more powerful engine by connecting seven to ten people together wearing such a cloud jacket. The jacket can also act as a micro or picocell tower. All of its capabilities can be shared on a private network with other devices via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
The wearable cloud can act as an application platform, so instead of modifying or having to upgrade the hardware, this wearable model provides a platform, and developers can build anything on top of it. This wearable cloud concept differs from existing smart clothing solutions in that they only act as input devices.
Current products such as the Levi’s smart jacket allow a user to make hand gestures on the jacket to answer a phone call or shuffle through a playlist. Cloud computing is a system where the hardware and software are accessible over the internet seamlessly from a remote location.
In view of increased expenditure towards enhanced wages and safety standards, the commerce minister of Bangladesh, Tofail Ahmed has sought higher price for Bangladeshi readymade garment (RMG) products in the global market. The prices of RMG products are not being increased though a lot of progress has been made towards safety, security and wages, he says.
Ahmed was speaking at a press conference attended by his countrymen and Dutch officials. He further said that the expenditures on the heads of workers’ wages and factory renovations cost a lot to the RMG unit owners while they were not getting the expected return against their increased investments. Though the minimum wages are $70 for RMG workers, but no one gets less than $120 that includes their monthly overtime in Bangladesh.
Ahmed observed that the current situation in the country was absolutely normal as the government handled militant activities successfully keeping trade and investment unhurt. Referring to uninterrupted inflow of foreign friends, the commerce minister said that Bangladesh was happy that friend of the country from all over the world were trooping in.
Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Lilianne Ploumen urged all the stakeholders in global apparel supply chain to make sure that profits are divided fairly and transparently with decent prices for products. She laid emphasis on more transparency in the whole value chain as it was one of the issues that they tried to address in the conference.
Ploumen appreciated the progress made by Bangladesh RMG so far. She, however acknowledged that RMG product prices have not been increased despite factories invested a lot as part of transformation of the sector. Responding to a question, the Dutch minister said there should be decent salaries for the workers and all need to talk to each other and all partners have equal responsibility to make the sourcing sustainable and profitable.
The Cauvery unrest has had a cascading effect on the hosiery industry in the Tirupur knitwear cluster. Vehicles bearing Tamil Nadu registrations are being stopped and damaged. So truck operators from Tamil Nadu are not confident of going through Karnataka. A good chunk of the hosiery cargo from the Tirupur cluster is now dispatched to the western and northern regions of the country through longer routes via Andhra Pradesh.
But then transport charges have shot up as the distances travelled are longer. Such increases in transportation charges shrink profits. The final costs on the products cannot be increased as many of the bulk orders are taken in advance with a fixed price quotation. There could even be losses if volume is lower or the costing does not have adequate buffer to minimise unexpected losses.
In any case cargoes have to be dispatched at any cost otherwise buyers would start sourcing from other clusters in the country. Trucks are used to send cargoes due to the flexibility of dispatching consignments even at the eleventh hour and also they could be sent to any destination, both of which are not possible through train. It is going to be quite a while before trucks start passing through Karnataka as usual.
