Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) in a recently concluded study observed that India is lagging behind in cotton exports to major markets. The situation has been created because of the duty disadvantage India is faced with as against Bangladesh, Vietnam and Pakistan. These countries enjoy duty free access.

The study observed that a whopping 25 per cent slump in Indian exports has occurred in the past five years to markets in EU and China. Citing figures CITI stated that Indian cotton yarn exports fell from USD 4.5 billion in 2013-14 to USD 3.4 billion in 2017-18.

Earlier India was the biggest exporter of cotton yarn to China. Now China has replaced India with Vietnam and Indonesia. These countries have duty free access to the Chinese markets whereas Indian yarn comes with 3.5 per cent duty. The study also pointed out that fabric export from India has fallen by 7 per cent.

A new report, “Exports to Jobs: Boosting the Gains from Trade in South Asia”, was presented in New Delhi, shows that increasing exports would boost average wages. The biggest beneficiaries of the wage gains would be the high-skilled, urban, more experienced, and mainly male workers. For low-skilled workers, the shift would result in an increase in formal jobs.

The report, jointly produced by the World Bank and the International Labour Organisation, breaks new ground in examining the impact of exports on local labor markets in South Asia. It uses an innovative approach, analysing the effect on local employment and wages of changes in exports by combining disaggregated data from household-level or worker-level surveys with trade data from India and Sri Lanka. The approach builds on a new wave of research looking at how globalisation might contribute to local jobs and wages, but, unlike previous studies, it focuses on exports.

The report provides options on how to expand and widely share the benefits of higher exports. Improving workers’ skills, getting women and youth into more jobs, and addressing distortions that make labor mobility costly are some of the recommended policy actions.

Earlier this year, global fibre producers Lenzing and Hyosung jointly developed a new sustainable fabric collection, which they presented at ISPO Munich in February. The new collection showcases the sustainable benefits of the two companies’ leading brands: Tencel Modal from Lenzing and creora elastane from Hyosung.

The collection comprises three fabric categories, starting with Lenzing Ecovero with creora eco-soft for a softer touch, whiter whites and low heat settable for reduced energy consumption. The second fabric line is Tencel Modal and creora PowerFit for a smooth, natural feel with superior shaping and compression, and the third is Tencel Modal and creora black for breathable, softer touch and deeper black with no grin through. The third collection marries functionality and aesthetics. It has a nylon product that it refers to as Aqua-x. The Aqua-x fabrics are cool to the touch, thanks to their large surface area coupled with minerals that have higher conductivity.

During fiscal 2017-18, Bangladesh’s apparel export to Germany amounted to US $5.89 billion – a major surge of over 7.5 per cent gain. Bangladesh fetched over 16 per cent of its total apparel export revenue from Germany during the period.

The main exported item was knitwear products which fetched US $3.2 billion, followed chronologically by woven garments at over US $2.3 billion, and home textiles at US $83 million.

During the July-January 2019 period, Bangladesh’s apparel exports to Germany amounted to US $3.51 billion – an increase of 9.6 per cent from the same time previous year.

Knitwear fetched US $2.03 billion and woven garment US $1.48 billion. During the same period previous year, knitwear fetched US $1.9 billion and woven US $1.3 billion.

Ghana has decided on zero-rate value-added tax for the textile industry.
This is aimed at reviving the industry, making it competitive, reducing the cost of operation and will be valid for a period of three years.

The value added tax was bleeding textile companies. The tax component meant the cost was passed on to the depots, wholesalers, retailers and ultimately customers, who had to pay higher prices.

The textile industry in Ghana has been struggling to meet the demands of the market due to the smuggling in of unregistered and cheap textiles from other countries. The high operational cost has also led to the shutdown of some of the textile companies, which has robbed many Ghanaians of their jobs. The textile sector which had a workforce of nearly 30,000 barely has 3,000 now.

The textile industry in Ghana is facing serious difficulties. Workers are being laid-off because of the pace of smuggling of cheap and fake prints from China. The market is flooded with counterfeit textiles. The tax stamp on fabrics will set up a task force to arrest those selling pirated materials. Togo and Ivory Coast are often the entry point for smugglers, with some Ghanaian market traders even travelling to China to collect designs. The borders are very porous with only a few of them manned by security people, making it very easy for these counterfeiters to pass through.

Coats’ sustainability report, ‘Pioneering a sustainable future’, launches a sustainability strategy which sets out seven ambitious targets for 2022 across five priority areas in order to accelerate the company’s progress towards a more sustainable future.

The five priority areas are water, energy, effluent and emissions, social and living sustainably. Having identified the five priority areas, Coats has set seven ambitious targets to be achieved by 2022. These include 40 per cent reduction in water used in litres/kg thread produced, 7 per cent reduction in energy used in kwh/kg thread produced, source renewable energy where feasible, zero discharge of hazardous chemicals effluent standards, great place to work’ or equivalent awards for all key sites, all employees involved in community activities, 25 per cent reduction in waste

There is also an additional target of manufacturing 100 per cent recycled premium polyester threads by 2024. All reductions are against the 2018 baseline.

Coats’ yearly revenue has grown four per cent. Pre-tax profits slipped as lower demand for zips dented apparel and footwear revenue.

The benefits from the turnaround program, connecting for growth, was realised faster than initially anticipated, with net benefits delivered in 2018.

Revenues from apparel and footwear were largely unchanged from last year. Growth in the segment was impacted by slower demand for zips due to certain fashion trends, and a 15 per cent decline in Latin America Craft sales.

The full year dividend per share was increased by 15 per cent.

The company enters 2019 in a strong position, with continued positive momentum in its core apparel and footwear and hi-tech performance materials businesses. The exit of its non-core North American Crafts business will ensure complete focus on growing the remaining businesses organically and identifying further value-add bolt-on acquisitions.

Coats sold North America Crafts to Spinrite. Coats has had a crafts heritage in North America and a long association with crafters but decided to sell North America Crafts since the crafting market has evolved in the past decade and requires a higher degree of specialisation, scale, innovation and digital capabilities to succeed. Coats will use proceeds from the sale to make further value accretive acquisitions.

Dornier presents the full range of machine and system solutions for the composites industry. The solutions include tapes, tape fabrics and 3D structured textiles.

Based in Italy, the company has been the preferred partner for technical weavers worldwide for over 40 years. It has extremely versatile roving weaving machines for processing high-performance materials like carbon, glass and aramid fibers.

With core skills in textile and plastic processing collected in its composite systems business unit, Dornier is building its reputation as a reliable equipment provider partner for the burgeoning composite industry.

The requirements placed on modern composite components, like very high dynamic loads, good impact resistance and outstanding damage tolerance, cannot be met with layered textile reinforcements. The solution, multilayer, integrally reinforced 3D fabrics, can be produced economically on 3D weaving machines from Dornier. With an innovative fabric guidance system, fabrics can be manufactured with thickness of up to 100 millimeters. For this, the textile weave pattern is first developed in a virtual environment and then transferred digitally to the weaving machine controller.

Both dry and fully impregnated tapes can be produced in widths up to 600 millimeters on the Dornier tape production line at manufacturing speeds as high as 30 meters per minute.

"As per European Textile and Apparel Confederation (Euratex) in its annual report, the European textile sector generated a business volume of €181 billion in 2017. Europe is also one of the world’s biggest consumer markets along with the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy. As Eurostat reveals in 2016, each European home invested almost a 5 per cent of its consumption expenditure in clothes and footwear, which is a total investment of €395.4 billion. Consumption of clothes further grew by 0.9 per cent in 2017."

As per European Textile and Apparel Confederation (Euratex) in its annual report, the European textile sector generated a business volume of €181 billion in 2017. Europe is also one of the world’s biggest consumer markets along with the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy. As Eurostat reveals in 2016, each European home invested almost a 5 per cent of its consumption expenditure in clothes and footwear, which is a total investment of €395.4 billion. Consumption of clothes further grew by 0.9 per cent in 2017.

Trade agreements with Japan and Canada boost commercial exchange

To encourage free trade within the region, the European Union is negotiating bilateral agreements with various countries. Two of the biggest agreements signed recently are the agreement with Canada (CETA) and the treaty with Japan (JEFTA). The Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) was signed between the European Union and Canada. Reduction tariffs in the agreement, valid from 2017, have increased trade between the two territories by 20 per cent in besides boosting commercial interexchange by €20,000 annual million.

EU plans more treaties, agreement with Morocco causes concern

The European Union is also negotiating trade treaties with Mexico. The treaties deal with tariff reductions, with the leather as one of the most important raw materials in that exchange. Additionally, the union recently concluded agreements with South Korea, Moldova and Ukraine, and is negotiating with Colombia and China.

The European Union has also resumed dialogue with the US on free trade issues. After the US withdrawal of Tip negotiation post Donald Trump’s Presidency, the European Commission has started maintaining contacts again to resume negotiations.

However, the dialogue between the European Union and African countries of the Mediterranean watershed is a major cause of concern for the industry. One of these is about Morocco -- the main destination for Spanish textile exports. The country is seeking to reduce the number of industrial process to a single country in order to enjoy trade benefits. This will also allow them to abandon the European market and work with Asian raw material.

Promoting import from third world countries

The European Union also promotes import from third countries by excluding them from tariff payments upto approximately 50 years ago. Countries like Myanmar or Bangladesh enjoy free trade policies with Europe, despite not respecting human rights. According to the European Union, countries with good government also enjoy benefit. In this case, they are free of two third of the total tariffs rates. In this group, countries like Bolivia, Philippines or Sri Lanka are included.

However, countries having duty free access to the European market form the biggest group. This group caters to all kinds of products except arms and ammunition. The European Commission is now promoting a digital single market policy to encourage a single price for all European products sold online. Recently companies like Nike and Guess were penalized by the European Commission for violating this principle of digital single market, and limit cross-border sales to certain products.

During February 2019, Vietnam’s total export-import turnover was down 30.5 per cent against the previous month.
Exports were down 33.9 per cent while imports were down 27.1 per cent.

In the first two months of this year, the total export-import turnover showed a year-on-year rise of 6.7 per cent. Exports increased 5.9 per cent and imports rose 7.5 per cent, causing a trade deficit of 84 million dollars. During this period Vietnam’s exports of machinery, equipment, and components were up 19.3 per cent; exports of garment-textiles were up 19 per cent; and exports of footwear were up 18.4 per cent. During the same period, the country’s imports of fabrics of all kinds were up 16 per cent; imports of machinery, equipment, and spare parts were up 14.6 per cent; and imports of computers, electronic products, and components were up 11.4 per cent.

Vietnam plans to become the world’s third major supplier of garments and textiles. In 2018, the export turnover of garment and textile products marked a year on year increase of 16 per cent. However Vietnam has to depend on raw material imports. Enterprises have to import over 60 per cent of the raw materials they need. Many companies in the sector have speeded up production since early 2019 to meet large orders for the first trimester.