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The global output of digitally printed textile is growing at a considerable rate. While the share of digitally printed textile is insignificant, rising pressure for shipping products in a minimum possible time is likely to boost its share considerably by next year. This, as per a report of QYResearchReports.com, in turn will fuel demand for digital printing machine all over the world. The repository of the website titled ‘Global Textile Digital Printing Machine Market Professional Survey Report 2016’ presents insights into the primary factors that is influencing the market’s trajectory.
Digital textile printing offers a practical approach which has encouraged several designers and manufacturers to opt for it over other printing technologies. Despite the proliferation of digital printing being sluggish compared to the traditional forms printing, it is gradually catching up with the introduction of novel technologies. The demand for textile digital printing will thus increase in the forthcoming years with the changing dimensions of the textile industry.
The reasons for growing demand for textile digital printing machines are many. Compared to screen printing, these machines enable higher creativity in textile printing and provide superior design flexibility. Furthermore, designers nowadays prefer digital printing because of its cost-effectiveness.
Unlike conventional printing methods, digital printing is eco-friendly and requires lesser physical inventory levels. This is one of the key factors that is fuelling demand for digital printing machines in the textile industry. Since these machines contribute little to carbon footprints, their deployment is expected to surge considerably in the forthcoming years. Digital printing on clothes is carried out using printers, which enable saving over 95 per cent of the water used if the process was carried out using traditional methods. Furthermore, digital machine consumes considerably less amount of energy, leading to very little textile waste. The increasing awareness regarding the intrinsic benefits of the technology will boost installation of digital printing machines across the textile industry. Moreover, manufacturers are nowadays increasingly relying on digital textile printing to cater to the dynamic preferences of consumers.
These factors are supporting the growth of the textile digital printing machine market. However, the growth witnessed by the market in future will be determined by the penetration of digital printing into the commercial textile production.
"The mega annual event in knitwear industry ‘Knitwear Symphony 2016’ and ‘The 6th Hong Kong Young Knitwear Designers’ Contest’ was organized by Knitwear Innovation and Design Society (KIDS) September 9 at the ongoing CENTRESTAGE in Hong Kong. The theme this year was, ‘Innovation Explorer’ aimed at encouraging young designers to make breakthroughs and explore their creativities."
The mega annual event in knitwear industry ‘Knitwear Symphony 2016’ and ‘The 6th Hong Kong Young Knitwear Designers’ Contest’ was organized by Knitwear Innovation and Design Society (KIDS) September 9 at the ongoing CENTRESTAGE in Hong Kong. The theme this year was, ‘Innovation Explorer’ aimed at encouraging young designers to make breakthroughs and explore their creativities.
In alignment with the theme, KIDS invited local knitwear brand Roku to showcase its new collection for the first time. Popular pop composer and singer Hins Cheung was appointed as the Knitwear Ambassador to support local fashion design industry and young designers.
The judging panel comprised well known professionals including Ikuto Umeda , CEO of the Shima Seiki Hong Kong Limited Company, Joanna Ho, the famous local fashion designer, Ching Siu Wai, Publisher of City Magazine, Alex Lai, GM, Australia Wool Innovation Ltd, HK, Elsa To, CEO and GM, Cocktail Select Shop, Leung Wai Ping, President ,LF fashion and Anthony Keung, President, Knitwear Innovation and Design Society.
The contest was divided into two teams: “Emerging Designers” and “Graduated Designers”, with 12 final contestants competing for the champion and runner ups. Kenneth Yeung (Dormant Scars) was announced champion in ‘Graduated Designers’, while Christy Lee (Floating in the Air) and Zepar Siu (Reflection) were first and second runners up. In Emerging Designers, Jonathan Yip (Get Your Map Citizen!) was the Champion and Kenneth Tsang (Memory Fragment) and Wayne Lo (Urban Escape) were the first and second runners up. The Best Designer Award (COCKTAIL) went to Zepar Siu and Shima Seiki award went to Kenneth Yeung, while the Best Use of Australian Merino Wool Award (Woolmark) went to Joan Lam.
KIDS, aims to promote local knitwear culture and bring in new inspiration to the local fashion industry. With this in mind, Knitwear Symphony 2016 and the 6th Hong Kong Young Knitwear Designers’ Contest provide a platform for young designers to showcase their talent and creativities, paving the way for sustainable growth of local knitwear industry.
"For decades, China has been a global leader in textiles and apparel supply chain however, of late the country has been facing major challenges regarding market demand and supply. The global supply chain dynamics is changing across the world as new trade policies are coming up and the emerging sourcing hubs in the global map. To retain its lead in the global demand supply chain, China, now has to deal with various challenges which include rising labour costs and scarcity of skilled labour in certain areas.China braces to cope with new competition."
For decades, China has been a global leader in textiles and apparel supply chain however, of late the country has been facing major challenges regarding market demand and supply. The global supply chain dynamics is changing across the world as new trade policies are coming up and the emerging sourcing hubs in the global map. To retain its lead in the global demand supply chain, China, now has to deal with various challenges which include rising labour costs and scarcity of skilled labour in certain areas.China braces to cope with new competition
Internationally global marketers are shifting locations of manufacturing looking for lower cost and cheaper labour. Although even few decades back China was a dream destination for manufacturers for skilled labour at low cost, but the story is different now. The generation of skilled, low cost labour in China is gone. The younger generations of china’s labour force are better educated and skilled. Moreover many were born at the times of “one child per family” policy in China. The mindset of the new generation of work force is quite different and also more demanding. Adding to this China is constantly facing labor shortage in coastal provinces seriously.
Hence, with increasing labour cost in China, it is losing the competition to other Asian countries such as Vietnam, Pakistan and Bangladesh. China’s textile exports have declined. For the first time in six years, in 2015, China textile exports fell, dropping 5 per cent per cent to $286.8 billion. Exports to the EU fell 10.6 per cent year-on-year and to Japan by 12 per cent. Exports to ASEAN countries fell 1.7 per cent, according to China customs data. The biggest competitor to China in ASEAN region now is probably Korea, India, Vietnam and Cambodia, etc. Among them, India is another major player in the global textile industry, the country expects its textile and apparel exports to reach $80 billion by 2020. A number of apparel retail brands such as Italian luxury brand Canali, British brand Superdry and American brand Tommy Hilfiger have invested in long-term growth in India. Similarly, Vietnam is still one of the fastest growing textile and apparel producers with growth from 2005-2012 of 28.1 per cent for textile exports and 17 per cent for apparel, of around 5,000 factories in the sector, almost 4,500 are garment producers.
Despite challenges, China’s retains lead
Despite rising labor costs, RMB appreciation and lower demand from export markets, China’s textile and apparel industry are still growing at a healthy pace and looks to dominate the global apparel sector, both as a producer and a consumer for years to come. China Textile and Apparel Industry Report 2016-2019 reveals that the country will continue to remain the leading textile and apparel sourcing country. In immediate future there is no one to overtake China in terms of scale, infrastructure, efficiency, expertise and stability. With the country’s long history and culture of textile development and despite government initiatives to reduce the focus on low-end manufacturing, China’s textile and garment industry still produces more than 40 percent of global textile and apparel exports and it still has the major share in the global textile and clothing trade .
Fast fashion brands may be out to kill the planet, an investigation has revealed. Clothes which are processed and got to the market as fast as possible (a model favoured by H&M, Zara's, and Forever 21) come at a very high environmental cost, with millions of tons of clothes ending up in trash bins, incinerators and landfills.
Going by the practice of popular clothing chains trying to cover up the environmental impacts, H&M had announced in April that it was accepting used clothes as donations from customers that they would recycle to create a new fiber and thus new clothes. However, only 0.1 per cent of all clothing received by charities and programmes that recycle clothes is actually recycled, H&M's Development Sustainability Manager Henrik Lampa admitted.
Fast-fashion outlets are worsening the problem because very few secondhand stores or websites selling used clothes such as thredUP accept items purchased from Forever 21 and other stores due to their poor quality. This means more unwanted clothing is adding to the national trash pile.
Fast fashion is the second dirtiest global industry after oil. Since 2011, Greenpeace has been running its Detox campaign to urge global fashion production houses to eliminate hazardous chemicals from clothes. The problem is further worsened by the increased speed of trend turnover. The fast-fashion outlets are changing trends very quickly to stimulate more sales due to their quick and voluminous output. This means that recent purchases will go out of style sooner than ever before. This indicates that there would be more clothes in the trash bin.
Natural fibers including silk, linen, cotton and semi-synthetic fibers (modal, rayon and Tencel) have a similar decomposition process to food which yields methane. But it's impossible to compost these clothes. Other materials are acrylic, nylon and polyester. Since these have a petroleum base, it could take many hundreds of years to fully decompose.
Three small green businesses that offer ethical apparel in New York, Arizona and Wisconsin were proclaimed winners of Green America's ‘People & Planet Award.’ The winners of the $5,000 prizes are Themis and Thread, Fed By Threads and Fair Indigo. The winners were selected by enthusiasts during a month-long online voting period. The award recognizes innovative US small businesses that integrate environmental and social considerations into their strategies and operations.
Fran Teplitz, Green America's executive co-director, informed choosing clothing made ethically and with consideration to the environment was one of the best ways to support social and ecological responsibility in your day-to-day life by literally wearing it on your sleeve. He further said that his company applauds these small businesses for their work to help people and the planet with each garment they produce.
Jesse Beardslee, Founder of Themis and Thread, explained his company will use the prize money to purchase vintage and American-made sewing equipment. This would complement the machine that they already have ‘a 1940's Singer Featherweight 221’.
Alok Appadurai, Co-founder and CEO of Fed by Threads, said it was an honour to be recognized for the company’s commitment to end hunger in America. This was possible by supporting living wage garment jobs nationwide, reducing food waste and increasing demand for organic sustainable sweatshop-free apparel.
Finally, Robert Behnke, Co-founder and President of Fair Indigo was happy at receiving the award. He said his company strongly believes the best way one can contribute to a cleaner, greener apparel industry was to grow the market for fairly traded and earth-friendly clothing which supports organic farmers and small-scale humane production.
The next round of Green America's award will be announced in early 2017. That occasion would be the first time one of the three winning companies will receive $10,000 while the other two will each receive $5,000.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has asked the Cambodian government to improve the country’s business climate and enhance competitiveness by upgrading infrastructure, improving the quality of labour and strengthening governance. It should do so on the lines of China that changes its trade pattern by moving up the value chain, it added. China is a major investor in Cambodia that pumps in $2 billion by way of grants, loans and direct assistance with foreign direct investment (FDI) reaching $10 billion since 1990.
According to the IMF’s ‘China’s Changing Trade and the Implications for the CLMV’ report that was released on September 1, the evolution of Chinese trade, investment and consumption patterns offers opportunities and challenges to low-wage, low-income countries, including China’s neighbours in the Mekong region like Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (CLMV) which are all open economies highly integrated with China.
The IMF report said rebalancing in China may mean less of a role for commodity exports from the region. But at the same time, the CLMV’s low labour costs suggest that manufacturing assembly for export could take off as China becomes less competitive, and as China itself demands more consumption items. The IMF’s report recommended that Cambodia take full advantage of opportunities arising from China’s potential exit from labour-intensive industries by upgrading infrastructure to reduce logistics costs, find cheaper, more reliable, and more accessible electricity. Cambodia should also strengthen the legal framework for public-private partnership projects to possibly facilitate infrastructure investment, it remarked.
Garment manufacturers and traders have questioned the logic of planned move by truck owners to increase rentals, as a consequent to the recent increase in fuel prices. They feel, any further increase in transportation charges could make the products from Tirupur knitwear cluster uncompetitive in other parts of the country. K.S. Babuji, Secretary of Small Cotton Shirt and Inner Wear Manufacturers Association (SISMA) says according to the information received by them, truck operators are planning to increase their fare to Rs 300 for every 100 km.
Babuji opined that the predominant small/medium scale hosiery manufacturers in Tirupur cluster were worried over the attitude of both the government machinery and the truck operators when it comes to fuel price mechanism. He said that while truck operators raise the charges when fuel prices go up, but they do not lower their rates when fuel prices decrease.
Upon questioning about the same, Tirupur Lorry Owners Association president C N Ramsamy hinted at the possibility of increasing the charges but stated that no decision was taken on the scale of hike.
The apparel manufacturers are of the feeling that the sake prices of fuel were high only because of the exorbitant levy of taxes and duties. R M Senthilkumar, former chairman of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (Tirupur chapter), does not see any chance of the government bringing down the duties and taxes on fuel as it was considered as a revenue generation tool for the exchequer. However, he is of the view that some corrections need to be made as otherwise high fuel prices could trigger an inflationary trend.
Global clothier Gap has disclosed the factories which produce its garments. Fashion retailers Marks & Spencer and C&A, Nike, Levi’s and Adidas too have done the same exercise. Such disclosures are a boon for transparency in an industry that has rife with abuse. A million workers currently produce Gap clothing in 885 factories in about 30 countries around the globe. The company has reduced the number of supplier factories from about 2,000 six years ago to be able to manage relations.
Retailers were in the past reluctant to invite greater scrutiny by identifying their suppliers. They were concerned this could give competitors a window on a company’s clothing in production. Gap has revealed the names and street addresses of suppliers in countries such as China, Bangladesh, Egypt, Cambodia, Guatemala, India and Indonesia. The disclosures will lead to greater accountability for vendors and for Gap.
The growing number of apparel industry leaders disclosing factories is seen as good news for workers, the industry, and consumers. Activists have targeted the highly profitable fast-fashion industry, which churns out new low-cost garments daily or weekly to maximize sales volumes, and called on retailers to improve labor and environmental conditions at supplier factories in the impoverished developing world.
California-based anti-slavery charity As You Sow, says one of the most effective ways to curb forced labour in the garment industry is to target cotton spinning mills where workers can provide valuable information about the source of material in the fashion supply chain. The apparel industry in Bangladesh has come under pressure to improve factory conditions and workers’ rights, particularly after the collapse of the Rana Plaza complex in Bangladesh more than three years ago, when 1,136 garment workers were killed.
Following the tragedy, a number of initiatives were launched by global brands and charities to promote openness and safeguard employees, from ensuring the safety of buildings to providing better pay and working hours. But while most projects focused on farmers growing cotton in the fields or factory workers stitching clothes, few focused on the workers of spinning mills in the middle of the supply chain.
Run by the California-based charity, the Responsible Sourcing Network (RSN) launched a project focusing on mills in India and Bangladesh that together employ thousands of workers. Based in the middle of the supply chain, spinning mills are uniquely positioned to identify cotton produced with forced labour and prevent it from entering corporate supply chains was what Patricia Jurewicz, RSN’s director had to say on this topic. Jurewicz also revealed that thousands of young women are kept in bonded labour in spinning mills in southern India. This is where women are lured from their homes with the promise of a good job, but in reality they work in appalling conditions. The US and Britain have adopted laws that ban the import of goods produced by forced labour or require companies to report action taken to address slavery and trafficking.
A conference on the European textile and clothing industry will be held in Belgium on October 12 and 13, 2016. This will showcase the high-tech materials, advanced production technologies, new business models and growth markets for the textile industry of the future. The European textile and clothing industry is rapidly adopting advanced digitised manufacturing processes and technologies, using smart materials and exploring new high value added growth markets for textile based solutions.
The event is expected to bring together innovators, technology providers, researchers, clusters and other actors from the textile and clothing sectors from across Europe. A series of sessions will be dedicated to key technology developments in the major manufacturing stages such as fabric formation, textile surface processing and assembly and fashion production, market opportunities and technology trends in key technical textile application areas such as construction, health care, sports, protection, environment and agriculture.
Textiles and clothing play an important role in the European manufacturing industry, employing 1.7 million people. To maintain its competitiveness the sector has made a move toward products with higher value added. The sector accounts for a three per cent share of value added and a six per cent share of employment in total manufacturing in Europe.
