FW
Bangladesh’s export earnings from garments, jute and jute goods, frozen fish and footwear rose 6.22 per cent in November. Total shipments in the July-November period rose 6.86 per cent year-on-year.
Garments accounted for more than 82 per cent of total national exports in the first five months of the fiscal year, 7.46 per cent up from the same period a year ago. Knitwear exports went up 10.86 per cent year-on-year in July-November while woven garments rose 3.99 per cent.
Exports of leather and leather goods, the second largest export earning sector after garments, declined 2.95 per cent year-on-year. Within the same category, exports of leather footwear, however, grew 8.55 per cent. Shipments of jute and jute goods, another top earner, surged 16.51 per cent while jute yarn and twine saw their earnings rise while shipments of raw jute, jute sacks and bags fell.
The country’s garment manufacturers hope shipments grow 12 to 15 per cent a year so that the $50 billion export target by 2021 is reached. They feel cash incentives for exporters and improving infrastructure at ports and airports can help bolster exports. Exporters have also called for measures that will enable them to ship goods through direct cargo flights.
By early 2021 some 18 million items of intelligent clothing, or wearables are expected to be sold. These are fabrics that can measure heart rate, body temperature or stress levels and react accordingly. Conductive yarns, for example, are now being used to produce illuminated clothing, which can contain up to 625 lighting elements per meter.
Wearables are electronic technologies and computers that can be incorporated into items of clothing and worn; one characteristic is that they are directly connected to the internet, which means they are in a position to exchange data. They enable a new form of human/machine interaction with a virtually inexhaustible range of possible applications. Examples such as smart shirts, intelligent accessories or medical products can save lives. Most importantly, by adding to the wearer’s awareness of health and mobility, they improve safety in daily life and at work, as they can alert the user to risks and help in optimising working processes.
In spite of their great potential in the field of clothing, wearables and smart textiles have not yet moved beyond the early development phase. The reason for this is that a huge range of different elements in industry and science needs to work cooperatively to implement new ideas successfully and bring them to market.
"The upcoming Copenhagen Fashion Summit, to be held in May 2018 is set for a revamp. As per the new format, the global multi-stakeholder event will expand to two days, allowing more time to explore the many Summit components, including the new Innovation Forum, which boasts of more than 50 sustainable solution providers. On May 15-16, 2018, the world’s leading business event on sustainability in fashion will kick off its sixth edition at the Copenhagen Concert Hall."
The upcoming Copenhagen Fashion Summit, to be held in May 2018 is set for a revamp. As per the new format, the global multi-stakeholder event will expand to two days, allowing more time to explore the many Summit components, including the new Innovation Forum, which boasts of more than 50 sustainable solution providers. On May 15-16, 2018, the world’s leading business event on sustainability in fashion will kick off its sixth edition at the Copenhagen Concert Hall.
One new feature is the sustainable solutions platform Innovation Forum, which will draw attention to a curated selection of the world's most promising solution providers. Innovation Forum will enable participating fashion brands to meet with 50 plus solution providers covering the entire supply chain from innovative fabrics to green packaging solutions. Innovation Forum will also have a pitch stage for the presentation of disruptive innovations and a speed dating event with more than 350 pre-scheduled business meetings between brands and providers based on a prior screening and matchmaking process.
Leadership assembly
Like every time, the Summit will present an outstanding line-up of high-level keynote speakers, their names to be released in the coming months, just as the Leadership Assembly, a key component of the Summit, will convene industry decision-makers, civil society and government for closed-door roundtable discussions and public-private dialogues on the most urgent environmental, social and ethical issues. Finally, Copenhagen Fashion Summit 2018 participants can look forward to familiar, well-known features, such the release of the annual Pulse of the Fashion Industry report, a presentation from the Youth Fashion Summit, which just announced a partnership with the United Nations Global Compact focusing specifically on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 Good Health and Well-being and SDG 5 Gender Equality, as well as several facilitated networking sessions and panel debates on the most critical topics facing the industry today.
Portugal-based Tintex offers its latest fabric innovations with a new range of more than 80 qualities and styles designed for sportswear, athleisure, fashion and underwear market sectors. This season the new collection plays with new color balance techniques that deploy the benefits of chromotherapy for well-being alongside skin safe materials and finishings. The collection uses up to 90 per cent of new smart and sustainable materials that include Tencel, Modal and Micromodal, organic cottons, Supima cottons, Seacell fibers and natural organic linens.
Tintex, is a maker of naturally advanced, smart and responsibly crafted jersey fabrics which are used in the fashion, sports and lingerie markets. Its mission is to amplify and grow an eco-sustainable strategy for all its production, investment and fabric innovations and spread this message of change, best practice and influence throughout the contemporary textile fashion system.
The company offers beautiful, organic and natural materials combined with unique, hybrid nature-tech smarts, with advanced, added value and creativity. Honest but hi-tech sustainable organics is at the heart of the Tintex DNA to create better, smarter eco-materials, always with new levels of performance and hi-tech smarts, thanks to its expertise in specialist dyeing and finishing techniques, coatings and applications. These are all researched, designed and made using the latest equipment and processes.
Cotton growers in Maharashtra are facing the same problems as their counterparts in Gujarat—a low remunerative price and a widespread attack of pink bollworm on Bt cotton. The bonus of Rs 500 does not seem to have helped much in Gujarat which means distress level among cotton growers in Maharashtra, who have not been given such bonus, could be higher.
A severe spell of pink bollworm attack has caused damages worth Rs 10,000 crores to cotton growers in Maharashtra. The pink bollworm attack has damaged nearly 40 per cent of the estimated crop. The GM variety of Bollgard II has lost much of its resistance to pest attacks.
Gujarat had announced in October a bonus of Rs 500 per quintal for cotton over and above the minimum support price of Rs 4,020 per quintal for the small staple variety, Rs 4,270 for the medium staple, and Rs 4,320 for the long staple.
Gujarat is India’s top cotton producing state, accounting for nearly 25 per cent of the national yield. Cotton is grown on over 2.7 million hectares in Gujarat. Though Maharashtra has a larger acreage under cotton—normally 3.8 million hectares but 4.2 million hectares this year—it has lower productivity.
A number of textile and garment firms in Vietnam may benefit from the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) expected to be signed next year. This is especially true for firms that have close production chains, from fiber, cloth, yarn, and buttons to finished products. There will be ample opportunities to upgrade the value chain for the textile and garment sector as EVFTA will provide tariff preferences to Vietnamese exporters to the EU.
Vietnamese producers can upgrade their value chain, adding weaving or knitting stage to existing cutting and sewing. At present, this operation is particularly challenging, as it requires financial resources and high-skilled workers to manage the high-technology machinery. Vietnam, rich in labor and limited in available capital, is deeply engaged in the low-end of garment manufacturing activities (the cut and sew stage of production). The textile and garment sectors actually show huge differences between each other. Textiles are more capital-intensive, relying on technology and requiring highly skilled workers. They add higher value than the garment sector, which is labor-intensive and mainly reliant on low skilled workers.
However, many textile and garment firms in Vietnam might not be able to enjoy the benefits of EVFTA as many companies that import materials from countries like China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, and not from EVFTA members.
International forecast output of man-made fibres (cellulosic and oil-based, filament and staple fibres) has been set at 71 million tonnes as against 30 million tonnes of natural fibres. As per estimates by CIRFS, the European man-made fibres association, worldwide production of man-made fibres is set to increase further, whilst natural fibres will remain the industry’s biggest ‘employer’. At the farm level, estimated sales in 2016 amounted to around US$ 50bn. Due largely to the higher price of cotton and jute in 2015, output rose sharply by a further 8 to 10 per cent in 2016.
Of all the natural fibres, cotton is well known for consuming large volumes of water and use of pesticides to control the ever growing number of pests. On the other hand, many of the figures available are outdated and thus fail to reflect the correct position as new varieties and modern cultivation methods have led to tremendous improvements in these areas.
Extensive training programmes in the producer countries are helping small farmers gain higher yields whilst using fewer resources. The introduction of a nationwide water management system in Israel recently hit the headlines while describing the country as a ‘water wonder’. The Israeli water authorities launched a programme in 2008 not only to desalinate larger quantities of sea water, but also to repair leaky pipeline systems, install closed irrigation systems and, in collaboration with farmers, to tread new ground in cultivation. Comparing cotton yields per hectare between countries such as Mozambique with 162 kg, the USA with 912 kg, China, Turkey and Brazil with 1500 kg each, Israel has now taken the lead with 1892 kg.
Diesel has announced the departure of its creative director Nicola Formichetti and a new CEO Marco Agnolin. Renzo Rosso, Founder of Diesel and head of the OTB group has now recruited a specialist in fast fashion for this managerial role. Agnolin served for seven years as Chief at Bershka, the youth label from Spanish giant Inditex. The manager, introduced as a retail specialist, will fill the role left vacant by Alessandro Bogliolo, who left Diesel for Tiffany & Co this autumn.
The appointment therefore seems to highlight a new direction for the Italian brand. While Alessandro Bogliolo, who took the company’s reins in 2013, came from a luxury background, having previously served as director of operations at Bulgari, Marco Agnolin’s experience is much more clearly oriented toward the mass market, as shown by his time at Inditex, fist as country manager in Italy, then as chief of Bershka.
Who will be replace Nicola Formichetti’s successor as creative director is a big question. It also raises doubts as to whether the brand will continue to work in line with the selective distribution strategy implemented by its former CEO. As of now, the group has not specified any strategic guidelines for Diesel’s future.
Diesel, which accounts for 60 per cent of the OTB group's turnover, reported sales of 960 million euros in 2016, although its balance sheet still registered a loss.
Centro Algodonero Nacional (CAN) has become the 11th laboratory to be certified under ICA Bremen’s ‘International Laboratory Certification Scheme’. CAN’s Managing Director, Javier de Blas says by following ICA Bremen’s recommendations they have been able to further increase the quality of their laboratory. Based in Barcelona, CAN is an independent laboratory which provides an extensive raw cotton testing service to the entire cotton chain, from farmer to spinner. They join 10 other laboratories to become certified under the scheme, which aim at establishing an approved list of laboratories worldwide that meet a standard level of quality assurance.
ICA Bremen has developed the scheme based on American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) International and Commercial Standardisation of Instrument Testing of Cotton (CSITC) as well as building on the good practices of USDA and its own laboratory experience. Open to any international cotton testing laboratory, participating laboratories must meet a level of quality assurance based on specific criteria in eight modules, including conditioning, maintenance, calibration and testing procedures. Around 14 other laboratories are currently in the process of assessment. Once certified, they will become a ‘laboratory of choice’ to resolve quality disputes in line with the ICA Bylaws and Rules as well as providing a service to the cotton industry.
ICA Bremen is an 'international centre of excellence' for cotton testing, research and quality training. Operating from existing, state of the art laboratory facilities in Bremen, Germany the centre was officially launched in October 2011. ICA Bremen’s services include: Laboratory certification, laboratory testing, WCC classing authority, quality arbitration, round trials, cotton grade standards, R&D, training and quality expert certification.
The Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute’s Fashion Positive initiative has launched ‘Innovators Hub’, a resource centre for the growing circular fashion movement. Lewis Perkins, President of the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute says at a time when resource scarcity and growing global population make positive change the need of the hour, the rapid innovation of safer, healthier materials offers one of the fastest routes to achieving a circular economy. The Fashion Positive Innovation Hub aims to accelerate this process for the fashion industry.
Created with funding from the non-profit H&M Foundation, the Innovators Hub provides one-stop access to critical resources for material innovators striving to drive circular materials development through the innovation of safer, healthier materials developed as per principles of the Cradle to Cradle Certified product standard.
Annie Gullingsrud, Director-Textiles and Apparel sector for the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute says until now, creating safe, healthy circular materials that also meet designers’ requirements for performance, quality and aesthetics has been a notoriously challenging process. The Fashion Positive Innovators Hub has been designed to simplify the material innovation process by addressing the three biggest challenges currently faced by material innovators in fashion: Education and know-how; technical assistance; and funding opportunities.
The Fashion Positive Innovators Hub offers: Circular economy know-how, including a library of videos and interactive tools demonstrating how to apply the principles of the Cradle to Cradle Certified product standard to fashion. Chemical and material screening using the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute Material Wise tool which permits users to screen for known hazards with free access to the Cradle to Cradle Certified v3 banned list and v4 restricted substances list, including the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) manufacturing restricted substances list v1.1.; Access to investors, accelerators, brands and manufacturers via the Fashion Positive network, created to connect material innovators with the resources and support necessary to bring high-potential material innovation projects to scale.
