Sri Lanka-based Hirdaramani Group has teamed up with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s ‘Make Fashion Circular’ initiative to improve the use of natural resources and reduce waste with better design in apparel manufacturing, one of the world’s most polluting industries. The group, one of the island’s biggest apparel exporters, aims to reduce energy and water use and improve waste management at its factories island-wide as part of its sustainability initiative.

The group is part of a global project to redesign jeans to make their manufacture sustainable by 2021.Its efforts focus on garment durability, material health, recyclability and traceability. Hirdaramani employs about 20,000 people in factories across the island and provides apparel design, production and delivery services to some of the world’s top fashion and clothing brands.

Apparel and footwear are on an average, eight per cent cheaper in Spain than elsewhere in Europe. Only Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria are cheaper than the Spanish market. Garment prices are 9.4 per cent lower in Spain than in the rest of the continent. Footwear prices are 3.2 per cent lower. The strong presence of operators like Decathlon or Primark has forced down prices of the fashion sector in the Spanish market.

Fashion isn’t the only sector where Spain is cheaper compared to the European average. In fact, the differences are even bigger in transportation (20 per cent cheaper), alcoholic beverages and tobacco (15 per cent cheaper), restaurants and hotels (14 per cent cheaper) and transport equipment (12 per cent cheaper). Spain is more expensive only in two categories: communication (40.2 per cent higher) and furniture (4.7 per cent higher).

Away from Span, are the Nordic countries, with Iceland in the lead, where buying clothes is 50 per cent more expensive than the European average. Denmark is 39 per cent more expensive, Norway is 31 per cent more expensive and Sweden is 26 per cent. In France prices are 9.9 per cent higher. Italy and Germany are very close to the average.

R|Elan™, the next-gen fabrics from Reliance Industries (RIL), launched its latest studio in Tirupur, to display its future ready innovative range of sustainable and performance fabrics created through specially engineered fibers. R|Elan™ Studio will be a hi-tech experience centre that showcases all its Hub Excellence Program (HEP) partners’ innovative products & developments across aesthetics, performance and sustainability category.

It will provide a seamless and uniform experience to garment manufacturers, exporters, local & international brands, buying houses, agents, traders and the fashion design houses. This would help build a strong collaboration between R|Elan™ and the entire value chain.

About 70 per cent of the textile production of Pakistan is exported. This is further complicated by the structure of the industry which is fragmented with few vertically integrated companies leading to multiple taxation of the same goods. The bulk of the textile output is from indirect exporters such as spinners, weavers, finishers etc whose products after finishing are finally exported.

Withdrawal of zero rating has impacted the system badly. Only 90 per cent of the input tax will be allowed to be set off against output and 10 per cent is refunded 14 months later. Coupled with the four per cent withholding tax, and the additional funds required to pay the 17 per cent GST in the first place, there appears to be no chance of the industry’s surviving the additional working capital requirement or the wiping out of the slim margins and the already low profitability. This will necessarily turn into a loss for the great majority of the registered and compliant units in the sector leading to their imminent closure. About 70 per cent of the revenue comes from withholding taxes. These are extremely regressive in nature as they are applied to turnover and not on margins or profitability of the company.

German denim brand Mustang plans to launch an in-store clothing collection program in collaboration with circular solutions specialist TexAid.

As per a Textile Today report, the service will enable TexAid – which specializes in the collection, sorting, reselling and recycling of pre-owned garments to prolong the lifecycle of materials used in Mustang products.

TexAid is continually fostering new collection programs of post-consumer textiles to efficiently sort them for their next lifecycle.

Also they are looking for strong industry partners to push consumer awareness and participation in joint projects like these.

Having customers in more than 20 countries, Mustang is keen to improve its sustainability credentials by adopting the principles of a circular economy.

The brand’s partnership will TexAidenable it to benefit from the company’s existing infrastructure to collect, sort and – depending on quality – resell or recycle goods.

Meanwhile, Mustang is offering a simple in-store collection service in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, the Netherlands and Poland, enabling shoppers to drop off their unwanted items to ensure they’re ‘sustainably’ disposed of.

India may devise a new export incentive scheme especially for the yarn and fabric sector. Exports of cotton yarn and fabrics declined 9.98 per cent and 10.54 per cent respectively in July. There was a 35 per cent decline in cotton yarn exports in the first quarter of fiscal ’20. The Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS) will be replaced by the Rebate of State and Central Taxes and Levies( RoSCTL) for all exports in a phased manner. RoSCTL will allow reimbursement of duties on export inputs and indirect taxes via freely transferrable scrips. Scrips are incentives that can be used to pay duties. Among textiles, cotton and viscose yarn are suffering. Cotton yarn exports attract five per cent to six per cent of embedded taxes, which are not refunded to the exporters at any stage.

The textile industry wants RoSCTL to be extended to other segments of the textile value chain, which has been in place since March for the apparel and made-ups sector.

India’s textile and apparel trade gap with China, which is also a member of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement, has widened because India is losing its share of cotton yarn to Vietnam and Pakistan due to lower cost.

Indian cotton yarn production increased six per cent between April to June 2019 as compared to the same period last year. At the same time, blended and 100 per cent non-cotton yarn production increased 18 per cent, while cloth production by the mill sector fell 10 per cent.

The slowdown in spinning sector is evident from a large number of mills curtailing their operations and accumulating more yarn stocks. The fall in yarn prices due to weak domestic demand, a lackluster export market coupled with high alternative fiber prices is negatively affecting the profitability of many small to medium-sized mills.

The cotton and blends spinning industry is witnessing the biggest crisis in the past nine years. More than 600 spinning mills have shut down across India. Out of this, 225 mills have been closed down in Tamil Nadu. The steep fall has been caused by a variety of reasons, including a decline in exports to leading export markets like China, Bangladesh, South Korea and the duty-free access given for import of cotton yarn by China to countries like Pakistan and Vietnam.

The differential between domestic and international prices has narrowed in the past one month as global demand has also weakened due to the slowdown in major cotton consumption countries.

Hong Kong is set to host Centerstage from September 4 to 7, 2019. The fair will attract around 240 brands. The fair will continue its schedule as planned as per the organizers Hong Kong Trade Development Center despite the ongoing protests and riots in the metropolis. The fair’s motto this year is: ‘Future Tribes’ organized in three areas: Metro, for urban fashion; Iconic, for contemporary designs; and Allure, for craftsmanship. An opening runway show Centrestage Elits Opening Gala Show, where designers Anaïs Mak and Joseph Altuzarra will participate is also on the cards. It will also count with an award for young designers that has as a jury Kenzo Takada or Vivienne Tam, amongst others.

Meanwhile Hong Kong is looking forward to the upcoming free trade deal with Asean. Five Asean countries – Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar – have their free trade deals with Hong Kong taking effect very soon. Similar agreements with the rest of Asean members – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia – will take place a bit later. The Asean free trade arrangement will allow Hong Kong firms access to ten markets for goods, services, investments, economic and technical cooperation and dispute settlement. Asean is Hong Kong’s second largest trading partner, after mainland China. The pact with Asean would be a crucial alternative for Hong Kong companies that rely on traditional markets, such as the United States and the European Union. Hong Kong has provided billions of dollars in funding to subsidise ventures by small and medium-sized enterprises into new markets. The free trade agreements have material and virtual impact that give Hong Kong companies business links and new business positioning.

The withdrawal of the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS) will hit the knitwear and garment industry badly. The scheme provides four per cent incentive to garment exporters. Its absence would mean an increase in prices of products. This will put exporters in a disadvantageous position in the highly competitive international garment market that is now flooded with cheaper apparels from countries like Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Withdrawal of the incentive scheme would push up the prices of products which have been decided much in advance. Usually, advance orders are taken and a price is agreed on. If the incentive is withdrawn, and a price rise takes place abruptly, customers are under no obligation to buy since there are cheaper products available on the market.

India does not have free market access to the EU and the US – major buyers of garments – and this is a major problem being faced by Indian manufacturers since an entry tax is levied once goods reach the destination countries. After GST was levied in July 2017, exporters were left with just the four per cent MEIS as all other incentives in the form of duty drawback, rebate on state levies, and concession on service tax were withdrawn.

American cotton is facing a tariff-induced crisis. Cotton was among the first round of agricultural commodities China hit with retaliatory tariffs in summer 2018. Prices have been slowly declining ever since. And, this summer, it dropped below the level most farmers need to make any money from their 2019 harvest.

Around 2011, China began buying huge quantities of cotton. The United States exported some cotton to China during that time. By the start of 2018, China had used up most of its cotton reserves and was preparing to ramp up imports. The US cotton industry was preparing to meet the anticipated increase in demand when the tariffs hit. For the 2018-2019 crop year, the US expected to export more than three million bales of cotton to China and ended up exporting 1.6 million bales. Instead of exploding, America’s sale of cotton to China shrank — along with the value of US cotton.

Other key cotton importing nations have started to demand lower prices for US cotton, aware that American companies are becoming more desperate to sell. Also cotton acres in the US have grown by 23 per cent from last year. The sudden increase in supplies has pushed prices down further.