"The autumn edition of Intertextile Shanghai Home Textiles will be held from August 28-31, 2019 in Shanghai. The exhibition, to be attended by over 1,000 exhibitors from 25 countries, will provide solutions for the contract business and whole-home sectors."

The autumn edition of Intertextile Shanghai Home Textiles will be held from August 28-31, 2019 in Shanghai. The exhibition, to be attended by over 1,000 exhibitors from 25 countries, will provide solutions for the contract business and whole-home sectors.

To be organsised by Messe Frankfurt (HK), the Sub-Council of Textile Industry, CCPIT; and the China Home Textile Association (CHTA), Intertextile Shanghai Home Textiles –Autumn Edition will offer products that satisfy all sourcing needs of its customers. These include: bed & bath, decorative, upholstery & window treatment fabrics, carpet & rugs, wall & interior decorations, editors, whole-home solutions, design studios and digital printing technology.

The finished product zone

The finished product zone will include a number of international suppliers such as:

• Denmark-based Fossflakes will offers products made of 100 per cent extended polyethylene polymers and so is naturally hypoallergenic, which makes it a suitable filling material for allergy and asthma sufferers. These new products are easy to maintain and longer lasting than similar synthetic products.

• Japan-based Fujishinkou will focus on manufacturing down comforter. The company partners with farms in Hungary and Poland to use high quality down.

• Australian company Jaspa Herington will offers a large variety of pillows, quilts, protectors, foam & wool underlays and more. They also provide products especially designed for allergy sufferers, and therapeutic use.

• Hungary-based Naturtex specialises in wool, feather and down processing as well as bedding product manufacturing, their products are made of pure down, pure feather and different functional synthetics. They also use Actigard™ technology to ensure the products are non-allergenic.

Return of Contract Business 360o concept

Intertextile Shanghai Home Textiles will also introduce the Contract Business 360o concept with renowned contract upholstery exhibitors, editors and various information sessions, tours by industry experts and more ensuring a holistic offering for this fast-growing sector. Some of the upholstery fabrics suppliers participating this year include:

• Ateja Tritunggal PT (Indonesia): The fabrics offered by this company pass stringent tests for fire retardancy, abrasion and other technical requirements. It also provides special development teams are available for specific projects such as offices, auditoriums, hospitals, airports and hotels.

• Bestex (China): Bestex produces polyester and fiberglass screen fabrics, with Trevira screens as one of their product options. All their fabrics are flame retardant, and comply with Greenguard, Oeko-Tex and Reach Regulations.

• Culp Inc (USA): The LiveSmart fabrics of this company are produced exclusively with performance yarns that are encapsulated with a stain- and moisture-repellent finish for exceptional cleanability.

• Diaz Sunprotection NV (Belgium): Their Duette® Shades are designed to keep the heat out. The fabric is formed in a honey comb structure, which serves as an isolating layer in front of the window. During summer, this layer blocks the heat transmission from outside to inside, while during winter, this prevents warmth escaping through the glass.

• Elastron (Portugal): Elastron offers products specifically developed to satisfy demanding markets in the areas of contract, decoration and outdoor. The main features of their products include easy-to-clean, high-scratch resistance, fire-retardant and chemical solvents-free.

• Hangzhou Longshi Textile Co (China): Their blackout fabrics are fire-retardant, heat-insulative, and waterproof- and noise-reducing, and are ideal for household and hotel use.

• SIC Global Textiles (Poland): SIC Global Textiles offers a broad range of furniture and decorative fabrics for both domestic and contract sectors. Their blackout fabrics are especially useful for public places, such as hotels or restaurants.

The fair’s fringe programme will feature a number of zones and events related to these areas. This includes an IP licensing seminar for finished products, as well as a display area with IP products. And for contract business, seminars will focus on topics such as textiles for hotel, office and commercial space design. While a display area for contract business focusing on the practical utilisation of fabrics in commercial spaces has been developed in conjunction with a young local designer, Zhou You.

United States and Mexico decide to avert a tariff war

By agreeing to take measures to stop illegal migrants entering the US, Mexico has averted a five per cent import tariff the US had threatened to impose on all Mexican goods if Mexico did not commit to do more to tighten its borders. So the tariffs scheduled to be implemented by the US against Mexico have been indefinitely suspended. Under the new deal, returned asylum seekers will spend long periods in Mexican cities such as Reynosa on the Texas border, where drug cartels frequently kidnap migrants.

In any case tariffs on the top US trade partner were seen as damaging the American economy. The plan would have left the United States fighting trade wars with two of its three largest trading partners and would have further unnerved financial markets already on edge about a global economic slowdown.

The US says migrants have overwhelmed its resources on the southern border. US border officers apprehended more than 1,32,000 people crossing from Mexico in May, the highest monthly level since 2006. Under the deal, Mexico will also increase its efforts to stop illegal migrants from Central America traveling through Mexico to the United States.

India is considering phasing out the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS). This is in response to the US’ having challenged India’s export subsidy programs at the World Trade Organization (WTO). So India may roll out WTO-compliant schemes that will offset both state and central levies on inputs consumed in exports. Already, a scheme for the remission of state and central levies has been implemented in garments and made-up exports; this will be expanded gradually to include all key sectors.

MEIS was announced in 2015 by merging five different schemes. Under this, exporters, especially in labor-intensive sectors, are provided duty credit scrip at two per cent to five per cent of their export turnover, depending upon products and shipment destinations. Though GST has subsumed a plethora of levies, some still remain (petroleum and electricity are still outside the GST ambit, while other levies like mandi tax, stamp duty, embedded central GST and compensation cess etc remain unrebated).

India’s logistics costs make up for as much as 16 per cent of the consignment value (against ten per cent in developed countries). India’s export growth has remained subdued at an average of just 3.2 per cent in the past six months through April.

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 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.

Battered by the intensifying US-China trade war, Hong Kong is looking to new markets and trade mechanisms. The pact with the ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations 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.

Hong Kong’s exports fell 2.5 per cent in the first four months of 2019 from the same period last year.

Lindauer Dornier will launch a new customer portal at ITMA 2019. Based on state-of-the-art database technology, this portal will provide an online shop with permanent availability for original parts for all product lines. In future, it will also include remote maintenance and networking of weaving machines to improve their run characteristics. The purpose is to make the job of machine operators and production planners easier.

On the occasion of a recent VDMA press conference themed ‘ITMA countdown’ in Frankfurt, speakers from member companies Lindauer DORNIER, Herzog and Mahlo showed how Industry 4.0 solutions will impact the textile process chain and what technologies visitors can expect to see at ITMA 2019. The products examples of the respective companies made clear that Industry 4.0 helps to improve production processes and results and supplements the range of services.

Dr. Janpeter Horn, CEO of Herzog, the leading company in braiding technology, introduced the company’s latest Industry 4.0. product: An app-box with which the customer can easily access the data of Herzog and other machines, e.g. on a PLC (Programmable Logic Controller). The data can be visualised on dashboards created by the customer on terminals or others. The data can be processed. by creating key figures, alarms or analyses.

Superba, a Vandewiele company, will introduce the latest version of its MCD/3 space dyeing machine for carpets at ITMA 2019 along with further new developments in heat-setting, texturizing and winding technologies.

The latest MCD/3 space dyeing machine is capable of handling a layer of 72 ends with an unequalled range of spot length – especially for the ultra-short spots of below 25mm.thus enabling “one-pile/one-color” process on the carpet.

In combination with a TVP3 heat-setting line, the machine can space dye polyester or polyamide yarns with up to six colors and also allow special dyeing effects such as bi-colour printing to be achieved.

For acrylic yarns, the MCD/3 can similarly be combined with Superba’s new high capacity DL/5 setting line. It can also be combined with Vandwiele weaving or tufting machines, with all technologies now being equipped for machine-to-machine interaction and learning, as part of the company’s comprehensive TEXconnect programme. The company’s sensors, software programmes and servers have become increasingly sophisticated and the real-time data from different machines –across connected manufacturing sites and across different countries and even continents – can be collected and shared.

Digital models of both machines and production processes can be created and analysed for the optimisation of production settings, to vastly improve scheduling and planning and also make considerable savings on raw materials and energy.

Monforts Textilmaschinen GmbH & Co. KG will launch a revolutionary new system for yarn dyeing based on the proven Econtrol® dyeing system for fabrics at ITMA 2019 in Barcelona, Spain, from June 20-26, 2019.

This latest CYD denim processing technology integrates new functions and processes into the weaving preparatory processes – spinning, direct beaming, warping and assembly beaming, followed by sizing and dyeing – in order to increase quality, flexibility, economic viability and productivity.

Econtrol® is a pad-dry process employed in Monforts continuous dyeing in which the reactive dyestuff is fixed to the cellulose fibres during drying and the CYD multi-colour yarn dyeing system introduces a number of new concepts based on it, including the unique Eco Bleach process.

This is the first bleaching system for yarn treatment available on the market and will be of particular interest to denim manufacturers. The Eco Bleach system is combined with the washing units and the fabric is then dyed immediately, resulting in considerable savings in waste water and chemicals.

The most effective dyeing process for fabrics is now being applied for yarn dyeing and it is possible to process short batches of between 5-10,000 metres of yarn in order to produce 2-300 metres of fabrics in a single continuous process.

In its raw state, cotton has a light brownish/yellow tinge and bleaching is necessary to ensure its pure whiteness prior to dyeing. On conventional systems, this involves a separate process step, but with the CYD multi-colour yarn dyeing system it is now integrated into the Econtrol® process for full dyeing pre-treatment.

"Uster Technologies will launch the Management Platform™ at ITMA 2019. The Management Platform™, collects and evaluates information from different production stages and expands its insightful analytics with valuable intelligence as each additional instrument is connected. The entire process becomes more transparent for managers and operators."

Uster Technologies will launch the Management Platform™ at ITMA 2019. The Management Platform™, collects and evaluates information from different production stages and expands its insightful analytics with valuable intelligence as each additional instrument is connected. The entire process becomes more transparent for managers and operators. Finally, the Quality Management Platform™ drives consistent quality in every part of the spinning process.

The introduction of the Management Platform™ marks an important evolution for Uster Technologies. It combines collection and smart data analysis from more process steps with the next level of knowledge-based alerts about possible defects and extended prognosis of yarn performance in subsequent processes. Also very new is the possibility for better contamination control and quality-based optimization of the ring spinning process, including the possibility to stop defect production as early as possible.

The Management Platform™ provides alerts on a mobile app and important performance indicators on dashboards – to trigger early reaction to problems. Its reporting is also accessible on client terminals across the plant.

X-Rite Incorporated and Pantone LLC will showcase their latest Color iMatch formulation software for the textile industry at ITMA 2019. The software offers better initial matches and fewer corrections for faster dyeing times, cost savings and reduced waste.

The Color iMatch improves color matching by addressing this interdependence. It intelligently processes color data to provide optimal initial color matches and reduce wasteful formulation attempts. With a high return on investment, Color iMatch streamlines complicated textile workflows, improves formulation efficiency, and reduces material waste.

It offers textile and apparel manufacturers the following benefits

• Increases match rate up to 50 per cent and cuts correction steps by more accurately identifying likely dye combinations and accounting for current process conditions.

• It has the ability to dynamically update dye characterisations to maintain dye behavior, which may shift over time due to variations in ambient conditions, procedures, equipment or materials.

• Its fully-integrated Colorant Editor offers improved database performance by providing specific guidance that guarantees match prediction confidence.

• Digital specification of Pantone standards, including Pantone Fashion, Home + Interiors System for cotton and nylon, through PantoneLIVE™, which provides the official spectral values for Pantone standards.

• Easy transition between jobs by applying dynamic Formulation Rules that include process, material and customer specifications. • A gamut viewer to visually evaluate achievability by offering a unique target overlay to help lab professionals make educated formulation decisions.

"Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC), in association with the Social and Labour Convergence Program (SLCP), organised a workshop to announce the launch of SLCP operations in Gurugram, Haryana on June 7, 2019. "

Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC), in association with the Social and Labour Convergence Program (SLCP), organised a workshop to announce the launch of SLCP operations in Gurugram, Haryana on June 7, 2019.

SLCP uses a multi-stakeholder and inclusive organization and approach. Signatories include manufacturers, The converged assessment framework of SCLP provides a data set with no value judgment or scoring. It is compatible with existing audit systems and codes of conduct, and can be used by a wide-range of stakeholders & interpreted according to their interests and criteria. This eliminates the need for repetitive audits to be carried out on the same facility.

The 190+ SLCP signatories are now preparing for wide-scale adoption across apparel and footwear supply chains. Towards the India launch, SLCP held one-day seminars in Bangalore, Tirupur, Mumbai & NCR to introduce facilities and their business partners to the SLCP process.

HKL Magu, Chairman, AEPC believes this programme will encourage sustainable and innovative management systems which ensure holistic growth of all the stake holders.

Sharon Hesp, Sr. Manager, SLCP, Dr. S Sunanda, SG CITI, Reema Agrawal, Sr. Program Manager, GAP Inc and Balaso Malagave, Sr. Manager, Intertek also attended the workshop.