Tens of thousands of Vietnamese factory workers have been laid off.

Almost half a million others have been forced to work fewer hours as orders fall in the southeast Asian country, one of the world’s largest exporters of clothing, footwear and furniture.The cost-of-living crisis in Europe and the United States -- major markets for Vietnamese-produced goods -- has seen the buying power of Western shoppers plunge.Women factory workers, who make up 80 percent of the labour force in Vietnam’s garment industry, have been hit the hardest.

Since September 2022, more than 1,200 companies -- mostly foreign businesses in the garment, footwear and furniture sectors -- have been forced to sack staff or cut working hours. Compared with last year, orders are down 30 per cent to 40 percent from the United States and 60 percent from Europe, where inflation and energy bills have soared because of the war in Ukraine.More than 4,70,000 workers have had their hours slashed in the last four months of the year while about 40,000 people have lost their jobs -- 30,000 of them women aged 35 or older.

The slowdown has come as a shock because export businesses in Vietnam were running at full capacity for the first half of 2022.

The second edition of the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme is being finalized.

The scheme for garments, made-ups and home textiles will have lower minimum investment and turnover requirements so as to attract small and medium entities. The incentives on offer may slightly be lower than what was offered under PLI 1. But the scheme would still be attractive. The PLI scheme for textiles (first edition), introduced in 2021, is divided into two parts and is available for the production of manmade fiber fabrics and apparels as well as technical textiles.

The minimum investment requirement for the first part is Rs300 crores with a minimum turnover requirement of Rs600 crores. Investors are entitled to an incentive of 15 per cent of the minimum turnover in the first year, which is to go down by one per cent over the next four years.

Part two requires a minimum investment of Rs100 crores with a minimum turnover requirement of Rs200 crores. The incentive here is lower at 11 per cent in the first year, which is to be reduced by one per cent over the next four years.The second edition of the PLI scheme will be available to cotton items also.

Coloreel’s technology for thread dyeing reduces water consumption by 97 per cent. This provides significant environmental benefits for the textile industry. The company's sustainability operations are now quantified and third-party verified.

Coloreel uses one single white thread to create millions of colors and intricate patterns. It unlocks new design possibilities, while providing environmental benefits. By dyeing a 100 per cent recycled polyester thread in real time, water consumption is reduced by at least 97 per cent compared to traditional dyeing methods. In addition, the technology significantly reduces thread waste. By instantly colouring thread during production, Coloreel produces no wastewater, minimises the use of chemicals and reduces thread waste.

Coloreel, based in Sweden, is a textile innovation brand that has developed a ground-breaking technology for embroidery that enables high-quality colouring of textile thread on demand, unlocking a world of potential. When Coloreel launched its ground-breaking technology for digital thread dyeing, the aim was to streamline an embroidery industry characterized by slow processes, difficulty in creating complicated designs and an excessive use of resources.

Traditional thread dyeing produces 50 times more wastewater than Coloreel's direct dyeing does. The company is currently focusing on further reducing the amount of energy and ink used in production.

Seidensticker uses Coats Digital to provide full visibility of its capacity planning and critical path.

This will enable Seidensticker, an European manufacturer of men’s shirts and women’s blouses, to respond quickly to smaller, more complex order requests and reduce the time and cost challenges involved in meeting customers’ last-minute change requirements.

The solution offered by Coats Digital, called FastReactPlan, provides total visibility to global capacity planning and workflow processes which allows business-critical decisions to be made quickly and ensures early discovery of potential delivery challenges. FastReactPlan significantly improves production efficiencies, increases OTDP and reduces workloads as well as reduces last-minute firefighting for planning teams across the whole business.

Coats Digital helps brands and manufacturers optimise, connect and accelerate business critical processes from design and development to method-time-cost optimisation, production planning and control, fabric optimisation and shop floor execution. Used in over 3,000 factories globally, Coats’ end-to-end apparel, footwear and textile software and SaaS solutions improve agility, speed to market, efficiency, transparency and sustainability.

FastReactPlan is an apparel production planning software solution, supporting a faster, more reliable order confirmation process and production plan which is optimised for delivery, speed and efficiency.The highly visual, flexible drag and drop approach to planning allows effective master planning across multiple factories, as well as fast, detailed and accurate scheduling of manufacturing lines/machines.

Istanbul Fashion Connection will take place in Turkey, February 8 to 11, 2023.

Some 25,000 visitors from 100 nations are expected, from all sales channels, from department stores and boutiques to online platforms, from eastern Europe, the central Asian markets and the Arabian Gulf region, alongside buyers from Turkey.

The goal of the event is to offer a one-stop shopping solution that shows the creativity of the Turkish fashion scene, enables access to new sales markets and at the same time establishes the connection to potential production partners for supply chain optimization.

The clearly structured fair with over 600 exhibitors in nine halls gives an overview of the new collections in the areas of women’swear, men’swear, children’s wear, denim, shoes, leather and furs. Separate platforms are LinExpo for lingerie and hosiery and FashionIST with a wide range of wedding dresses, evening wear and suits. IFCO Sourcing, a new area, offers the opportunity to find numerous companies for sourcing capacities.

Turkey has long been a global player in the fashion business.The competitive advantages of production in Turkey are short delivery times, high production quality, young and well-trained employees, the possibility of small minimum order quantities and a vertical textile and clothing industry that allows one-stop shopping.

Inditex’s nine-month profit rose by 24 per cent.

Inditex raised prices by five per cent to offset rising costs. The price rises helped offset weakening global demand for clothing.The world’s biggest fashion retailer’s store and online sales rose 19 per cent from a year ago.

Known for its ability to quickly deliver the latest designs to consumers thanks to its flexible sourcing, Inditex has lately been offering more high fashion Zara pieces designed for special occasions.The approach has allowed it to sell higher-priced items and attract shoppers from the luxury segment of the market. Sales increased 11 per cent during the third quarter, a slower pace than in previous months, reflecting a weakening consumer environment. The company’s second quarter sales increased 16 per cent from the same period a year ago.The fashion giant’s sales between the start of November and December 8 increased 12 per cent from a year ago. Sales were positive in all geographic areas. But the company will have to deal with more cost increases over the coming months including pressure from workers for higher salaries.

Inditex is the parent company of brands like Zara, Massimo Dutti, Pull&Bear and Bershka. Zara continues to be the strongest brand in Inditex’s mix.

The operating rate of cotton yarn mills in China has reduced continuously. Chinese cotton yarn mills have still not recovered to normal production due to the loss of spinning and the difficulty of procuring cotton.

With December about to end, it is hard for mills to recover their operating rate to the high level in September. On the other hand, the expectation on the future cotton yarn market turned from pessimistic to slightly optimistic as the relaxation of the epidemic control policy increased the confidence of market participants and ZCE cotton futures were firm.

Downstream fabric mills and traders had few stocks in hand, and the willingness to stock increased obviously compared to previous stages.Price-rising sentiment moved up with the improvement of sales and firm ZCE cotton futures. Offers in some mills rose and the discounts given at previous stage were canceled. But the trading sentiment was still not as good as that in the previous year.

The inventory of cotton yarn mills was not low, and cotton yarn prices were still under control. If the future market sustains, cotton yarn prices may start rising. After all, the overall cotton yarn inventory pressure has relaxed this year in terms of overall stocking volume.

CDP has awarded Lenzing an A rating for leadership in corporate transparency and performance on climate change.

Lenzing is a supplier of sustainably produced specialty fibers. CDP is a global environmental non-profit and is seen as the gold standard of environmental reporting with the richest and most comprehensive dataset on corporate and city action.

Through significant demonstrable action on reducing climate impacts, water security risks and deforestation, Lenzing is leading on corporate environmental ambition, action and transparency worldwide.Wood, the pulp derived from it and water are some of the most important raw materials for the sustainable production of cellulosic fibers from Lenzing and also part of the most important focus areas of Lenzing’s sustainability strategy. Lenzing assumes responsibility by striving for sustainable procurement based on environmental certificates and responsible and efficient use of these valuable resources. Lenzing sources wood and dissolving pulp from sustainably managed forests and plantations and not from ancient, protected or endangered forests.

Lenzing’s biorefinery process ensures that 100 percent of wood constituents are used to produce dissolving wood pulp for fiber production, biorefinery products, and bioenergy. With its Refibra and Eco Cycle technologies, Lenzing offers solutions for transforming the textile and nonwovens industries towards a circular economy.

Bangladesh’s apparel trade share increased in 2021. This is clearly a positive note for Bangladesh’s textile and apparel industry. As the industry is bouncing back with high-hopes despite multifaceted global challenges apparel entrepreneurs have upgraded the technology and product quality as well as capacity. Thus, despite Covid and the Russia-Ukraine conflict brands and buyers keep on placing orders with the readymade garment industry.

Bangladesh wants to elevate its share in the global apparel business to ten per cent by 2025 from the current six per cent. The industry is focusing on diversifying markets and apparel products to swell its growth. In July to November of fiscal year 2022-2023, Bangladesh’s apparel exports to non-traditional markets grew by 24 percent.

Bangladesh is the second-largest exporter of clothing after China. The country is gaining from its favorable sourcing destination with its high reputation in transparency and circularity i.e. sustainable factories, comparatively low labor cost, smooth supply chain while globally leading fashion retailers are trying to down their apparel sourcing from China. Despite China’s strong performance in 2021, China accounted for only 23 per cent of US apparel imports in 2022, much lower than 36 per cent in 2015. Similarly, China’s market shares in the EU, Japanese, and Canadian garment import markets also fell over the same period.

Hohenstein has opened a testing lab in China.

Starting in the first quarter of 2023, the new textile laboratory will supplement the company’s Hong Kong laboratory capacity with testing and on-site inspection services in the hot spots of textile production. The new laboratory will offer suppliers, manufacturers, brands and retailers a wide range of textile testing services.

With more than 40 offices and laboratories, Hohenstein is an international partner for independent testing, certification and applied research around the human-textileenvironment interaction. Through standard or customized testing, and interpretation of the results, Hohenstein solves problems, verifies claims and helps partners bring better, safer products to market – more sustainably. The laboratory locations in Germany, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, India, Hungary, and now Shanghai, offer shortened turnaround and sample transport times.

In some locations, Hohenstein offers sample pick up services from the customer to the lab for testing. The laboratory locations in Germany, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, India, Hungary, and now China offer shortened turnaround and sample transport times. In some locations, Hohenstein offers sample pick up services from the customer to the lab for testing.No matter where the examinations, tests and analyses are carried out, all these laboratories work with state-of-the-art equipment and the same high standards.