Mohammad Ali Khokon, President of Bangladesh Textile Mills Association (BTMA) has demanded withdrawal of VAT on all kinds of yarns and fabrics sold between March 20 and June 30 this year. He also sought exemption of interest on term loans for six months and extension of term loan repayment period by two years for the affected millers.

He demanded enabling payment of utility bills like gas and electricity for the next six months starting from March in 12 monthly installments while withdrawing associated VAT, interest and surcharge. He demanded the government facilitate duty free import of textile dyes and chemicals until June 30 this year.

The BTMA chief also urged the government for withdrawing all demurrage fees for imports at the Chattogram port between March 20 and June 30 this year. Khokon revealed that yarn and fabrics worth Tk 3,500 crore have piled up in around 250 spinning and weaving mills in Bangladesh because of the ongoing movement restriction to curb the spread of coronavirus.

These millers had manufactured targeting two upcoming festivals Pahela Baishakh and Eid-ul Fitr. The affected millers mainly produce yarn and fabrics for the local market, Khokon said in the letter, which he prepared to submit to the finance ministry and other government offices next week.

This year, the government imposed a ban on large gatherings to celebrate the first day of the Bangla calendar, when clothing items worth around Tk 1,500 crore.

Italian luxury fashion suppliers are plunged into uncertainty as the Italian government imposed a lockdown on the national territory until at least April 3. The lockdown previously only included key manufacturing provinces in the North, representing as much as 60 per cent of Italy’s textile and clothing manufacturing, and had already sounded alarm bell for the country’s economy, which will now be further affected.

Italian luxury brands are directly supporting the fight against the virus. Giorgio Armani has donated €1.25 million to hospitals in Milan and Rome and the Civil Protection Institute, while Bulgari has delivered a new-generation microscope to the Lazzaro Spallanzani hospital in Rome.

Giorgio Armani’s cruise show, scheduled for April 19-20, 2020 in Dubai, has been shifted to October. Versace and Gucci both cancelled their shows in the US, originally planned to take place in May. Prada scrapped its May resort show in Tokyo.

The list of trade shows affected by Covid-19 includes Luxe Pack Shanghai, an important packaging show, and Esxence, an art perfumery show in Milan, shifted their dates from April to July and late May respectively. SXSW, the tech, film and music conference and festival in Austin, Texas, planned for 13-22 March, was cancelled one week before it was due to open, representing a significant blow to the city’s economy.

Over million workers in Bangladesh’s garment industry have either been fired or furloughed as global fashion companies have canceled or suspended orders in Bangladesh due to COVID-19 crisis, reports Penn State University’s Center for Global Workers’ Rights and the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), an independent labor-rights monitor.

A number of suppliers in Bangladesh have abandoned these workers and refuse to even cover the costs of work already done. Many factories expect to close unless something changes. The dire situation has come about as Covid-19 has forced companies to shutter stores as part of social-distancing measures while demand for new clothes has simultaneously plunged as shoppers stay home and stop buying anything that isn’t essential. Retailers are doing all they can to avoid adding to their mountain of unsold inventory.

Fashion companies have already canceled or put on hold at least $3 billion in orders from Bangladesh’s garment factories, according to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA). That’s roughly equivalent to a full month of exports, based on previous BGMEA data. Without the orders, many factories are unable to pay workers

A national team of six Taiwanese textile manufacturers are modifying their production lines and ramping up output to help meet the rising demand for surgical masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) amid the COVID-19 outbreak. The team is being led by Makalot Industrial, who had the advantage of research and development conducted 17 years ago when the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic hit Taiwan.

Taiwan mostly imported protective hospital gowns then and the government began encouraging domestic manufacture to start making PPE. So the company filed an application in 2003 for a license to manufacture protective gowns. The company's research team came up with a design, which it patented three months later.

The company is now on its way to produce 100,000 protective gowns by late April and is aiming to manufacture another 220,000 at its factory in Vietnam. It also plans to set up a production line in Chiayi in southern Taiwan, which will manufacture 10,000 gowns per month initially and gradually raise its monthly output to 50,000, he said.

The team of five manufacturers has been contracted by the government to deliver 1.1 million isolation and protective hospital gowns by April. Meanwhile, Kang Na Hsiung Enterprise, a manufacturer of hygiene products and synthetic textiles, has revived its production lines for melt-blown non-wovens—the main raw material used to make surgical masks—which had been mothballed for at least five years. The company has ramped up its daily production of melt-blown non-wovens to 2.4 tonne, which can make more than 3 million face masks.

Milan Women’s Fashion Week, which is scheduled to be held in September, will become the first season to combine men and women’s collections! Fashion freaks can definitely feel ‘fruit of patience is really sweet!’

Earlier, Milan Men’s Fashion Week was scheduled for June this year. The announcement was confirmed by Camera Nazionale della Moda (The National Chamber of Italian Fashion). Men’s shows due to run from June 19 to 23, will now run alongside Milan Women’s Fashion Week, planned from September 22 to 28 this year.

Spanish fashion brand Mango opened a new new logistics centre in Llicà d’Amunt, a picturesque town outside Barcelona. Approximately 600 people work six days a week at this highly automated facility, where around 400 operations are machine-driven, to process items for store deliveries.

The company has so far invested €232 million in the 186,000-sq. mt. facility, which can stock up to 7 million hung garments and 20 million folded garments and accessories at the same time. It was completed in 2016 but became fully operational last summer. By incorporating the latest automation technologies, the centre is able to process 75,000 garments an hour, tripling the retailer’s former capacity.

As soon as hung garments arrive at Llicà d’Amunt, they are unloaded onto one of nine automatic loading bays, which can process 27,000 garments an hour. Each bay is equipped with a classifier that separates the garments by size and style. They then travel along a 24-kilometre rail to be shipped out to stores or held in the warehouse. According to Mango, its hanging garment installation is one of the most automated in Europe.

On the opposite side of the logistics centre are automatic loading docks that can process 1,000 boxes of folded garments and accessories per hour. The boxes are passed through a weighing and labelling area and identified with a tracking ID so they can be located at any time. Like the hung garment area, the folded garment warehouse prepares boxes to be either shipped or stored based on in-store sales information.

German sportswear maker Adidas has apologized to landowners for not paying rent for stores around the world forced to close by COVID-19 lockdowns. The brand needs credit even after staff cut their working hours, executives waived part of their pay and the company stopped share buybacks.

Many retailers around the world have been seeking to defer rent payments as they look to ride out the coronavirus shutdown, passing on the financial pressure to their landlords.

The brands plans to suspend a €1 billion ($1.09 billion) share buyback it had planned for this year as a way to conserve cash after closing its retail outlets in Europe and North America.

Adidas AG is a multinational corporation, founded and headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Germany, that designs and manufactures shoes, clothing and accessories. It is the largest sportswear manufacturer in Europe, and the second largest in the world, after Nike. It is the holding company for the Adidas Group which consists of the Reebok sportswear company, 8.33% of the German football club Bayern Munich, and Runtastic, an Austrian fitness technology company. Adidas' revenue for 2018 was listed at €21.915 billion.

Pakistan textile industries have demanded emergency measures from the government as foreign buyers have canceled or suspended $1.3 billion worth of textile products due to Convid 19. According to Pakistan Chemicals and Disease Association, the supply chain in the country is also likely to be affected due to lockdown in the production of textile, pharmaceutical and other industrial sectors. Pakistan exports $25 billion annually, but the outflow is stopped due to lockdown.

Ijaz Khokhar, Chief Coordinator of the Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association, says canceling orders from global buyers or delay will affect labor and more people will go below the poverty level. The airlines and the hotel industry, on the other hand, have been the most affected by the outbreak of Coronavirus all over the world and buyers of hotel businesses abroad have also delayed their imports from Pakistan

In order to adapt and respond to labor challenges in cotton farming, such as those posed in Western China, the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) has set up an expert Task Force on Forced Labor and Decent Work to review selected elements of the Better Cotton Standard System.

The task force will produce recommendations to improve the effectiveness of the system in identifying, preventing, mitigating and remediating forced-labor risks. The Better Cotton Standard System is a holistic approach to sustainable cotton production that covers all three pillars of sustainability–social, environmental and economic, and addresses the many challenges of cotton production.

The Task Force on Forced Labor and Decent Work brings together representatives from the civil society, retailers, brands and consultancies with a strong expertise in human rights and forced labor issues in supply chains, particularly in the textile sector. The Task Force also draws on the expertise of a project adviser with a background tackling the risks of child and forced labor in cotton harvesting at the International Labor Organisation.

H&M’s 2019 Sustainability Performance Report released recently shows, the Swedish retail giant H&M sourced 97 per cent of its cotton from sustainable sources in 2019, as it moved one step closer to achieving 100 per cent sustainable cotton. The fashion retailer has also committed to stop sourcing conventional cotton for collections from 2020 onwards in a bid to accelerate its sustainability targets. By 2023, the company wants 100 per cent of its materials to be either recycled or sourced in a more sustainable way.

Among other things, H&M explored new circular business models with the launch of on-demand, customisation, repair and rental initiatives. New sustainable materials were introduced, such as the cellulosic fibre made by Infinited Fiber Company from recycled cotton textiles and Re:newcell’s ground-breaking Circulose.

There were also efforts to provide more transparency, with the brand disclosing viscose and other man-made cellulosic fiber suppliers. And 100 per cent of H&M’s textile and leather supply chain are now enrolled in the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals program which tackles the issue of hazardous chemicals in the global textile industry.

One of H&M’s latest initiatives is Treadler, a B2B service for external textile and apparel retailers announced in March. Initially working on a small scale, the service will give companies access to H&M’s global supply chain to help them overcome initial business barriers and accelerate sustainable change.