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Sporting goods giant Adidas will use only Bluesign-approved chemicals in its supply chain. The company will work closely with its suppliers in making the change, training them and adapting their production processes. Adidas has a partnership with Bluesign Technologies as a part of its strategy for managing chemicals in its supply chain.
Bluesign tests and assesses chemicals to check for toxicity and environmental harm. It also audits the companies that make the chemicals before classifying - and grading - the screened chemicals in a database. Access to the database will help Adidas’ suppliers make smarter choices about the chemicals used in making its products.
Earlier the company would specify a particular finish for a product and let the supplier choose the chemicals to achieve it. Now suppliers have to go to Bluesign for chemicals. This provides a greater degree of assurance and a guarantee that its suppliers will choose the best chemicals as inputs.
Adidas has a goal of eliminating hazardous chemicals from its products and supply chain by 2020. It’s trying to ensure 99 per cent of all its products are free of poly fluorinated chemicals by 2017. The company is also aiming for full supply chain transparency by 2020.
www.adidas.co.in/
Texworld, the international event for fashion fabrics and clothing with nearly 900 exhibitors will take place from September 15 to 18, 2014 at Paris Le Bourget in France. The exhibition will host collections by the winners of the latest Dinard International Festival of Young Fashion Designers. It will also feature two shows by the couturier Eymeric François, and by winners of the Dinard Festival and third-year students majoring in knits at the ESMOD fashion design and business school.
These events will complement the ‘Impulse’ lectures, highlighting show trends for winter 2015, by the two artistic directors Louis Gérin and Grégory Lamaud. They will interpret influences, codes and colours, providing impetus for stylists, style directors and weavers.
Thailand will promote the richness of its textile heritage, exhibiting more than 100 silk and cotton fabrics produced by 20 rural communities as part of the OTOP (One Tambon One Product) project launched in 2001 by the Thai government. ‘Tambon’ means a Thai community or small village. The fabrics exhibited at Texworld would be entirely hand-woven. The aim is to identify and promote unique local skills, benefit from local resources and develop quality products which meet the demands of domestic and international markets.
Each season, Texworld hosts a Thai pavilion, which accommodates around 20 exhibitors, including weavers. They draw inspiration from the traditional skills, which are reflected in both the motifs and fabrics used.
Texworld continues to make visitors and exhibitors aware of the importance of sustainable development to the textile industry. For the first time, the Sustainability Days at this event will cover two days, as there are more lectures on sustainability than in previous years.
www.texworld.messefrankfurt.com
International fashion fair Chic (China International Clothing and Accessories Fair) will be held in Shanghai from March 18 to 20, 2015. A new section will give visitors an overview of China’s trendiest and most popular fashion brands and their concepts. One hall is being dedicated to menswear, casual and sports wear while another will focus on women’s wear, Chinese and foreign designers and accessories. Another section will deal with the latest innovations in technology and store design. A hall will concentrate on leather and fur. At the overseas pavilion, brands from Germany, France and Italy, among others, will exhibit their products.
Having debuted in 1993, Chic is among the largest and the most important fashion fairs in Asia. It has become a pre-eminent event for brand promotion, market expansion, tech innovation, trend presentation, forum, awards and various distinctive activities. With an exhibition area of more than 1,00,000 sq. mt., it showcases over 1,000 brands from more than 20 countries, with more than 1,00,000 professional visitors. Participants include spinning, weaving, knitting, printing and dyeing plants, textile machinery producers, industrial associations, accessories manufacturers.
Among the exhibits are fiber preparation machines, knitting machines, spinning machines, weaving machines, non-woven and industrial machines, chemical blended textiles, mercerized and reflective fabrics, fancy yarn, wool, hemp and cotton yarn.
www.chinaexhibition.com › China Trade Shows Calendar
When US retail giant Gap decided to start sourcing garments from Myanmar, it probably never thought serious compliance issues would arise. Gap was the first major US retailer to source garments from Myanmar since economic sanctions were suspended in 2012.
San Francisco-based Gap is currently sourcing finished outerwear, including jackets and vests, for its Old Navy and Banana Republic Factory brands from two South Korean-owned factories in Yangon. But these units have been found to have deplorable working conditions. Workers haven’t been trained to handle chemicals. Electrical outlets and wires have poor insulation. Ventilation or air circulation is poor. Working hours have been found to regularly exceed the permitted limit. Both factories had employed under-age workers in the past. At one factory, several workers stated they were 19 years of age but had worked at the facility for three to five years.
The factories did not consistently pay required premiums for overtime hours. Workers reported cases of verbal abuse and inappropriate behavior by supervisors. Line supervisors at one factory were found to have taken unofficial disciplinary action or collected fines from workers without a clear basis for action.
In addition to labor rights and worker safety issues, Gap highlights a number of other potential problems while doing business in Myanmar, including environmental policies and procedures, land disputes and corruption.
www.gap.com/
Textech Bangladesh will be held on September 3 to 6, 2014. This is the 15th edition of Bangladesh's oldest and biggest exhibition on textile apparel machinery and technology. Participants will be able to interact with buyers and build strong business relationships with them. The show will exhibit machinery for spinning preparation, machinery for winding, texturing, twisting, bonding, knitting and hosiery machinery, storing and packing equipment, equipment for recycling, dyes and chemicals, waste reduction and pollution prevention etc. Textech will provide innovative ideas to bring growth and development to the textile and garment industry.
At the same venue TEXAPP Bangladesh 2014 will be hold also on September 3. This event brings together textile and apparel industry leaders and machinery importers of Bangladesh under one roof. TEXAPP Bangladesh is a platform for a strong cooperation within the Bangladeshi textile and apparel industry. It will address issues related to forming a common position of the Bangladeshi textile and apparel industry in the global arena, setting development goals in a phased manner, enhancing the competitiveness of the industry in Bangladesh, boosting inter-regional trade with an aspiration to expand present capacities for increasing textile and apparel exports and launching Vision 2022, based on discussions held at the event to further take the industry forward in the coming years.
textechonline.org/textechbd2014/index.html
There is growing global demand for denim. And Bangladesh will open at least six factories this year. The Envoy group for one will start producing an additional one million yards of denim fabric a month in the next three months. It produces three million yards a month at present.
Envoy currently purchases 60 tonnes of yarn a day from local yarn makers to produce denim. To meet growing demand, it is now establishing a new spinning mill to produce 50 tonnes of yarn a day. Five to six other groups have already installed machinery to produce the fabric.
In the middle of 2013, denim lost much of its global demand to jeggings. But now western buyers have returned to denim. Bangladesh exports denim fabrics and garments worth more than $600 million a year to the $60 billion dollar global market. It has 25 denim factories that produce around 20 million yards of denim fabrics a month. These go to major retailers and brands like H&M, Uniqlo, Levis, Nike, Walmart, M&S, Calvin Klein, Diesel and Gap.
Within Bangladesh, firms meet 40 per cent of the demand for denim fabric by denim makers and exporters. Imports account for the rest.
Heimtextil, the international trade fair for home and contract textiles, will take place in Germany from January 14 to 17, 2015. The organizer Messe Frankfurt is preparing a new, expanded trend concept called the Heimtextil theme park. One of the themes it will explore for 2015-16 is experience, since textiles are the perfect vehicle for inspiring sensory and interactive experiences.
The new Heimtextil trend book presents a selection of spectacular projects, which can be experienced with the senses. For the first time, the trend book comes with interactive print elements, which enable readers to obtain supplementary information in digital form by scanning the parts of the book marked and then watching animated images on their smart phone or tablet.
The first part of the trend book revolves around social, political, technological and artistic themes that have a decisive influence on designers. The second section looks at trends that are set to have a direct influence on interior design and home textiles in 2015. The third part of the book is devoted to color innovations.
Heimtextil has a special function as a trend barometer and benchmark for high-quality textiles characterised by excellent design and innovative functionality. Against this background, Messe Frankfurt launched the Heimtextil trend show back in 1991 and has expanded it continuously since then.
heimtextil.messefrankfurt.com/frankfurt/en/besucher/willkommen.html
When it comes to exporting garments to the US, Africa has a distinct advantage against Bangladesh. It’s because of discriminatory duty benefits. Garment exports from Africa to the US, attracts zero-duty.
Garment exports to the US from nine leading African countries increased 9.66 per cent year-on-year in 2013. However, apparel exports to the US from Bangladesh fell 1.12 per cent in the first five months of 2014 from the same period a year ago. African countries have the cotton benefit, which Bangladesh does not have. Bangladesh now fears losing its competitive edge due to a discriminatory duty structure and a higher cost of production.
The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) gives duty-free and quota-free status to apparel items made in more than 45 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. While Bangladeshi garment exporters paid $828 million in duties to US customs last year and $3.41 billion in the last five years.
A distinct advantage in the African trade preference is that the fabric can come from any country, including places such as China and South Korea, for apparel manufacturing and still receive duty-free status. That gives Africa an advantage compared to major apparel producing countries such as China and Vietnam, whose garments are subject to tariffs.
Textile firms in the Czech Republic saw a 12 per cent year-on-year growth in the first half of 2014. The Czech Republic has a long history of textile manufacturing for the garment industry. However, the largest firms in the field are chiefly involved in the production of materials not used in clothing but in a number of other industries.
The largest of them, Juta, makes a range of products for the construction and agriculture sectors, as well as technical materials. It exports 80 per cent of its output. The number two, Pegas Nonwovens, produces polypropylene and polyethylene nonwoven textiles for agriculture, construction and for use in the manufacture of hygiene products.
Another of the industry’s big five Kordárna makes technical fabrics for the rubber industry. It saw its revenues climb 13 per cent in the first half of the year. However, while Czech textile firms are enjoying relatively good times, things are not quite so great for the country’s sector, with the segment growing by a relatively low two per cent in the first half of 2014.
The clothing industry has managed to survive some very lean years when local manufacturers tried and failed to compete with cheap imports from Asia. The sector has achieved this by going in for increased specialization.
The All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) wants the government to ensure a level-playing field in trade negotiations with India.The objective basically is to boost exports to India rather than have the country flooded with Indian imports.
APTMA says the duty structure between the two countries must be equal and on a reciprocal basis without any discrimination and non-tariff barriers must be negotiated. The demand is for a long term trading arrangement with India. The proposals further maintain that if finished goods are placed in the positive list of items then the raw materials required for manufacturing of those goods should also be placed on the positive list of items to be imported from India. It mentions an anomaly in the case of polyester staple fiber or filament. This is a raw material included in the negative list of items and its import is not allowed from India but finished goods made with fiber or filament such as synthetic yarn and fabrics are freely allowed to be imported from India.
APTMA is the premier national trade association of the textile spinning, weaving, and organized sectors in Pakistan. It represents 396 textile mills, out of which 315 are spinning, 44 weaving and 37 composite units. These spinning mills have production facilities of texturing, mercerizing and dyeing of yarns; weaving mills have a sizeable number of air-jet looms, and composite mills have manufacturing facilities from spinning to finished textile products under one roof.
www.aptma.org.pk/
