Fast fashion is taking the fashion industry by storm with cheap prices and staying up to date with the latest trends. It picks up trends and current styles that celebrities are wearing and puts them on the market at a way lower price.

Each week thousands of styles are created and implemented in stores for consumers and always ready to cycle out as the trends pass. These stores encourage the throwaway culture by creating clothes with cheaper material and have someone itching to buy the newest and latest clothes as the old items are not in season or good to last more than three times through the wash. This throwaway culture brings most individuals to feed landfills with unwanted clothing items.

Fashion is responsible for 92 million tons of solid waste dumped in landfills each year. Every second, the equivalent of an entire garbage truck of textiles is sent to landfill or burnt.

Commonly, companies do not have regulations for their employees and workers are unpaid, poorly fed and work long hours each day. Exposure to harsh chemicals is another issue. Not only are workers exposed to chemicals such as lead and toxin dyes, these go into water streams as well.

Print Make Wear will double in size at Fespa, Germany, May 14 to 17, 2019. The fast fashion factory feature was introduced in 2018 to meet the needs of visitors interested in opportunities in printed fashion textiles and garments. Taking the form of a live production environment, Print Make Wear addresses every step in the garment production process. This begins with planning, design and prepress, progressing to printing, drying, cutting, sewing, welding and embellishment and finishing with packing and retail display.

The expanded feature will allow more space to showcase an even more comprehensive range of garment printing technology solutions and consumables, as well as incorporating a staged area for presentations and debates and a catwalk for fashion shows. The visitor experience will also be enhanced with two separate guided tours, one with a focus on direct-to-garment production and the other tailored to visitors interested in roll-to-roll production.

The technologies showcased within Print Make Wear 2019 will include direct-to garment digital and screen printing presses with both automatic and manual presses printing on water-based inks. The roll-to-roll digital technologies will include dye-sublimation as well as other textile print technologies. The garments produced and modeled within Print Make Wear will carry a striking series of exclusive designs on the theme of Elements.

The Japanese government recently passed a plan to sign a revised free trade agreement (FTA) with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The revised FTA, which includes liberalisation of investment and service fields, will be a huge step towards enhancing the economic partnership between Japan and ASEAN.

The country is expected to sign the agreement on February 27 and seek approval from parliament this autumn, while ASEAN countries will start the signing procedure from March 2. The original FTA between Japan and ASEAN went into effect in 2008 and was Japan’s first multilateral free trade deal, which focused on the trade of goods.

To further optimise benefits from this pact, the two sides started negotiations on investment and services in 2010 and concluded at the ministerial level in 2017.

The ready-to-wear and textile industries together gave Turkey a trade surplus of 15.6 billion dollars in 2018.
Ready-to-wear exports which were four million dollars in 1970 reached 17.6 billion dollars at the end of 2018.The aim for 2030 is 30 billion dollars of exports. With the severe contraction in the domestic market in Turkey, companies need to direct themselves to exports in order to survive the recession with minimal damage. Turkey’s average export price of 1.5 dollars per kilogram has reached 18 dollars in the apparel industry.

Turkey’s readymade clothing and apparel sector, which has assumed the role of a pioneer, does value added exports and contributes to employment and exports. The apparel sector contributes 10.7 per cent to Turkey’s overall exports and 13.1 per cent to industrial exports. The EU is the biggest market for Turkey’s ready-to-wear and apparel sector. This is followed by Germany, Spain, Britain, the Netherlands, France, Iraq, the US, Italy, Denmark and Israel. As for the other markets, there was a 48 per cent increase in exports to Russia, one of Turkey’s largest trading partners, followed by a 30 per cent increase in exports to China, the world’s largest ready-to-wear supplier. Other exports are to Qatar, Libya, Slovakia, Serbia, Egypt, Romania, Albania and Kazakhstan.

Fashion group Esprit Holdings recently posted a bigger loss for the first half amid changes in consumer behavior, price competition and reduced customer traffic across its distribution channels due to weakness of its brand.

The Europe-focused clothing retailer reported a net loss of HK$1.77 billion ($2.25 million) for the six months ended December, including a HK$924 million ($118 million) loss on provision for store closures and leases. That compared with a net loss of HK$954 million ($122 million) in the year-ago period. Revenue slid to HK$6.77 billion from HK$8.04 billion.

Esprit plans to cut about 40 per cent of its non-store jobs and reduce the number of products it sells in stores as it restructures in the wake of tough competition from online and fast-fashion retailers. The apparel group would also shut loss-making stores, restructure cost base and improve products offering, while time would be needed to draw customers back into its stores. The group expects its revenue to further decline in the next two financial years due to closure of loss-making stores.

An integrated large scale eri farming project has been launched in Arunachal Pradesh under the North East Region Textile Promotion Scheme. Financial assistance will be provided to 4000 beneficiaries under the scheme in the state. Skill training will be imparted to sericulture farmers and weavers under the Samarth Scheme for capacity building in the textile sector.

There are 27,000 looms and 33,000 handloom weavers in Arunachal Pradesh. Initially the project would cover five districts—Papumpare, East Kameng, Siang, East Siang and West Siang. Ninety per cent financial assistance will be provided to registered weavers wanting to upgrade their old looms.

Silk production is being encouraged in the Northeast. Projects worth Rs 690 crores are being implemented in the north east states. Out of these six are in Assam, one in Sikkim, two each in Meghalaya and Manipur and the rest in other states. The scheme is aimed at a holistic development of sericulture in all its spheres from plantation development to production of fabrics with value addition at every stage of the production chain.

All four commercially exploited varieties of silk — mulberry, muga, eri and tasar — are produced in the north east and this region contributes about 21 per cent of the total silk production in the country.

Yarn expo will be held in China from March 12 to 14, 2019. The fair consistently offers new options at each edition, with a wide array of yarn and fiber products, from fancy yarn to high-quality wool yarn, cotton, chemical fibers and many more. Over 460 exhibitors from China, France, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Pakistan, Singapore, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and newcomer Egypt will be present. The fancy yarn zone will see 125 exhibitors displaying their latest fancy yarn collections.

For brands in the textile industry, Yarn Expo is a prime platform to find innovation, whether that’s in sustainable fibers, high-quality yarns or unique functional products. As such, the event has seen fashion brands like Adidas, Ralph Lauren and Zara source upstream in recent editions, partnering with yarn and fiber suppliers in order to meet consumer demand. The fair will be held concurrent with four renowned fairs to attract the entire textile supply chain.

Today’s consumers are more conscious of the materials that go into their clothes. Following a year of fluctuating demands and trends in the textile industry, especially in China and the Asia-Pacific region, it’s more important than ever for suppliers to continuously innovate and produce strong products in order to survive in the uncertainty of the recent economic climate.

Singapore dye manufacturer DyStar Group has opened the first of its kind testing laboratory for the export industry in Bangladesh, providing end-to-end solutions in the supply chain, from raw materials to final products along with the testing services. The new facility, Texanlab Bangladesh, in Dhaka can test not only textile products but also dyes and auxiliaries. The company has Texanlabs in India and Bangladesh, and plans to set up similar labs in cities like Turkey, Vietnam and may be Pakistan.

The new lab would help to support the industry assisting them reduce the harmful chemicals, creating a greener and cleaner environment. Texanlab being a service company of DyStar Group closely works with more than 50 global brands and retailers and has tested more than 3,50,000 RSL parameters since its inception.

Specialty textile chemicals supplier CHT has seen a spike in demand for formaldehyde-free binders used in textile finishing and pigment dyeing – despite some initial doubts about the effectiveness of these types of formulations.

Formaldehyde-based finishes, as is the case with many chemicals used in the textile supply chain, have come under greater regulatory scrutiny. Many customers expected that the formaldehyde-free technology would lead to higher costs and adjustments in production processes. Nevertheless, in 2018 the team of CHT Germany was able to sell more than 500 tons of formaldehyde-free binders in Germany alone.

CHT, based in Germany, has set the goal to become the preferred partner for sustainable specialty chemicals all over the world. In all of its business fields its product ranges are now being increasingly substituted by future-oriented, more sustainable products. In order to future-proof its operations, CHT has also been developing alternatives to a variety of traditional textile chemicals which not only meet but exceed new and existing legal regulations. The ultimate goal of this ongoing work is to completely substitute critical substances and to develop future-oriented alternatives even if the industry has not yet the demand for such solutions. Chemical firms are now moving towards a greener approach to textile finishing.

Bangladesh is likely to sign a MoU with Russia to boost exports, especially in apparels. The country has also been looking at Russia for quite some time as a potential export destination for readymade garments. There is big demand for Bangladesh-made apparel items, seafood, potato, medicine and other products. Russia is interested in importing these items from Bangladesh.”

Bangladesh’s apparel exports to Russia amounted to $427.8 million during the fiscal 2017-18, according to Bangladesh Export Promotion Bureau. Knitwear contributed to $260.6 million of export while woven segment contributed $167.2 million. From July to January 2019, apparel exports amounted to $276.3 million, of $169 million was knitwear items and $107.3 million woven items.