VF Corp is separating and forming a new company VF Jeanswear which will be independent and publicly traded as Kontoor Brands. Kontoor’s internal brands will include Wrangler, Lee, Rock & Republic and the VF Outlet business. There may be some issues around the number of shares based on fractional shares, as fractional shares of Kontoor Brands will not be distributed. Those fractional shares will be sold in the open market and the appropriate cash payment for each shareholder’s fractional share will be distributed pro rata.

VF Corp is a big name in strong apparel, footwear and accessories space for years. Even after breaking out the denim and related casual apparel and accessories, VF Corp will still be a diverse amalgamated version of apparel and the related areas that has been assembled via brand launches and acquisitions. It currently has four segments: Outdoor & Action Sports, Jeanswear, Imagewear and Other. Its Outdoor unit includes brands such as North Face, Vans, Timberland, JanSport, Eastpak and Eagle Creek. Imagewear includes Red Kap, Bulwark, Horace Small, Dickies, Workrite, Kodiak, Terra and Walls.

Wall Street has been in the mood of asking larger companies to focus on their core businesses and asking larger companies to unlock value or to allow the investor pool to be able to invest in individual units rather than large jumbled conglomerated or amalgamated structures.

Print Make Wear will be present at Global Print Expo, Germany, May 14 to 17, 2019. Global Print Expo is Europe’s largest specialty print exhibition for screen and digital wide format print, textile printing and signage solutions. Print Make Wear is a live micro-factory for customised, roll-to-roll textile production and garment manufacturing. It will take the visitor through the actual physical process of making textile products quickly in an environment, and age, where space, utilities and natural resources are at a premium. The products on display at Print Make Wear will give an inspiring insight into the production workflow, and offer a window into customised, just-in-time manufacturing. The micro-factory offers a flexible, efficient and sustainable route that delivers viable manufacturing. Print Make Wear, roll-to-roll, will feature the latest software products from the Adobe Creative Suite.

The landscape of manufacturing has changed forever. Consumers now demand incredible speed of delivery and design diversity alongside sustainable manufacturing processes. Utilising artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality alongside specialist software and automated digital manufacturing equipment is now common practice for many businesses. In the era of Industry 4.0, a new generation of technology is meeting the demands of a new generation of consumers by working together to deliver millennial manufacturing.

Indonesia’s viscose rayon fiber capacity increased from 8.7 per cent of total world production in 2004 to 11 per cent of total world production in 2017. Since cotton is difficult to produce, the country has turned to viscose rayon fibers. Mixed with polyester as men’s clothing, viscose fibers are highly absorbent, with soft hand feel, have bright colors, and are resistant to resin processing.

Asia Pacific Rayon, which began operations earlier this year in Indonesia with a production capacity of 2,40,000 tons of viscose rayon fiber per year, is the first integrated producer of viscose rayon fibers in Asia with traceable raw material sources.

Indonesia is set to become one of the top five textile and textile product producers in the world by 2030. Of the use of raw materials, the industry uses 51 per cent synthetic fiber, such as polyester and nylon, 37 per cent cotton fiber, and 12 per cent rayon. But the industry still faces obstacles in reaching its full competitive potential, as nearly all cotton must be imported. In contrast, 80 per cent of synthetic fiber and 85 per cent of rayon is domestically produced, with these numbers expected to increase further. The aim is to increase the sector’s share in Indonesia’s total exports to 1.6 per cent.

Arvind is joining Fashion for Good. Based in Amsterdam, this initiative brings together the biggest names in fashion. Arvind is the latest to sign up to lending its expertise and vision to the growing collective, which also supports startups and scale-ups designed to reshape the industry.

Arvind is a global pioneer in sustainable textile manufacturing and has power brands such as US Polo Association, Arrow, Flying Machine and Tommy Hilfiger. Sustainability and innovation are its key strategic growth pillars and it has always attempted adoption of innovation in textile manufacturing. It is committed to promote the sustainable technologies originating from the Fashion for Good platform. Arvind’s aim is to work with these technologies to fuel the next set of growth in manufacturing with a drastically reduced environmental impact.

Fashion for Good is a buoyant ecosystem of game changers defining the future of fashion. By having Arvind joining in, all of Fashion for Good’s innovators and stakeholders are gaining in- depth knowledge and support from a unique pioneer in manufacturing. The entire fashion ecosystem is coming together to implement and scale innovative solutions across the fashion value chain. Many trailblazers are establishing the Dutch city as the new global capital of the burgeoning sustainable fashion industry.

Pointing out that export business has significantly picked up after the announcement of rebate of state and central taxes and levies (RoSCTL) scheme, AEPC has urged the Union Commerce Ministry to implement the scheme as soon as to enable exporters to take full benefit of the scheme. The Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC) has also sought a clarification on disbursal of the rebate on export of garments and made-ups from the ministry.

RoSCTL was announced on March 7, 2019. As per the scheme, the rebate on state levies (RoSL) for the apparel exports was reduced to 1.7 per cent from 3.5 per cent when the GST was implemented. Now, along with 1.7 per cent RoSL, 4.35 per cent rebate of central embedded taxes and levies would be provided to exporters under the RoSCTL scheme, which would be valid only up to March 31, 2020.

Twenty-one brands and buyers from North America, who were signatories of Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, recently launched a new platform, Nirapon, for safety monitoring in the Bangladesh readymade garment (RMG) units that supply them.

Nirapon will use a brand-led approach to monitor safety, oversight and reporting services for its members based on Bangladesh laws to help the factories build their own self-sustaining culture of safety, according to Bangla media reports. Factories would provide regular updates, including documentary evidence, to the brands and to Nirapon of their performances in those areas and work with vetted, local training and engineering firms who would conduct regular safety and training audits.

Over 600 factories are part of this initiative. All Nirapon member factories are required to continue to meet the National Action Plan harmonised standards for structural, fire, and electrical safety and all the factories would have to implement standardised training programmes focused on worker safety, she said. While Alliance had worked directly with factories to drive remediation and training programmes, Nirapon’s role would be of oversight and independent verification of safety and training compliance and reporting those results to its members.

American & Efird (A&E) has a new line of advanced identification threads called Integrity. These are molecular-tagged DNA threads. One of the big challenges brands face today centers around authenticity. Loss of revenue, reputation, and brand trust are some of the potential outcomes of counterfeit products. This thread line provides a tool which adds advanced identification for greater visibility and transparency into the product creation process.

A&E is a manufacturer of industrial and consumer sewing threads, embroidery threads and technical textiles. Through its global network, A&E’s products are manufactured in 22 countries, distributed in 50 countries and sold in over 100 countries. A&E supports many of the world’s top industrial and consumer brands with thread products that require strict quality and performance. The textile thread manufacturer achieved its initial targets for zero-waste-to-landfill in 2015. American & Efird has also launched a new recycled polyester sewing thread. This is designed especially for athletic wear and high-performance apparel. The new thread is derived from recycled post-consumer plastic bottles and aims to provide textile manufacturers within the performance apparel, active wear, athleisure, and intimate apparel markets a recycled alternative to existing sewing threads. The air-entangled sewing thread is made with Repreve recycled polyester, a brand of US yarn supplier Unifi.

According to the average estimate among analysts surveyed by Bloomberg ahead of the US World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report, the 2019-2020 U.S crop will expand to 21.8 million bales from 18.4 million the previous season. In March, the USDA had forecast that cotton acres would decline to 13.8 million for the 2019-2020 season from 14.1 million a year earlier. Still, anecdotal evidence in states including Texas and Oklahoma suggests the fiber cultivation will increase to 14 million acres nationally.

Relatively low prices for competing crops and rainy weather causing planting delays for corn may make the fiber an attractive alternative.

The US wants India to remove both tariff and non-tariff barriers for American companies and eliminate data localisation restrictions that weaken data security and increase the cost of doing business. US businesses complain of facing significant market access barriers in India. These include both tariff and non-tariff barriers, as well as multiple practices and regulations that disadvantage foreign companies. The US feels India’s average applied tariff rate of 13.8 per cent is the highest of any major world economy. While India’s import duty on ICT products such as network routers and switches and parts of cellular phones is as high as 20 per cent, the US rate for these same products is zero. India has countered by saying that domestic support per farmer in the US is a massive 267 times India’s and that huge subsidies have led to a competitive advantage of farm products of developed countries in the global market, which has forced developing ones like India to offer limited tariff protection to their farmers from the onslaught of heavily subsidised imports. The US imposes very high import duties on several products, including 350 per cent on tobacco and 164 per cent on peanuts.

US exports of goods to India last year jumped by 29 per cent while India’s exports to the US rose 12 per cent.

Oritain, a product and supply chain traceability specialist has mapped all Supima cotton growing regions. This will help the cotton industry to root out fraud in the global supply chain. With over 500 licensees in more than 45 countries, Supima partners with over 200 brand/retailers around the globe that use Supima cotton. Using Oritain’s forensic technology, these licensees can test and authenticate the origin of their Supima products at any stage in the supply chain, revealing if it has been blended or substituted and ensuring the product’s provenance. By testing the intrinsic natural properties of the cotton, Oritain identifies a unique distinguishing fingerprint for each product verifying where it was grown. Unlike other traceability methods, this fingerprint cannot be forged or altered and is unique to the land the cotton was grown on.

Global luxury group Kering has implemented Oritain’s services to verify that Supima cotton used in its garments is Supima cotton, woven and dyed by Albini. The partnership has produced the world’s first 100 per cent traceable organic Supima cotton by testing the cotton at every stage of production, from field to the retail floor, the company reports.