Forced overtime and pay cuts have become common feature in many Ethiopian short-staffed factories, says the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The Foundation states, in recent months, bosses eager to recover lost business have been forcing remaining workers to pick up the slack. These workers primarily worked for manufacturers including KGG Garments PLC and Indochine Apparel PLC, which supply big brands such as The Children's Place and Levi Strauss & Co. More than a dozen industrial parks were built in Ethiopia in recent years as part of ambitious plans to turn the poor, mainly agrarian nation into a manufacturing powerhouse, attracting investors with tax breaks, cheap loans and labour costs.

The Hawassa industrial park was inaugurated in 2016 and employed about 28,000 workers before the outbreak. Workers in this park said they have been struggling to meet their basic needs for most of the year — despite government measures aimed at protecting them.

Ethiopia declared a five-month state of emergency in April to fight the coronavirus and mitigate its affect, prohibiting companies including clothing factories from laying off workers despite significant sales and order reductions. Hundreds of workers employed in Hawassa in January kujbgvvbbgg2020 were furloughed or terminated during the pandemic, according to a phone survey of 3,896 female garment workers which was conducted between April 28 and July 1.

Workers interviewed by the Thomson Reuters Foundation said they were furloughed on reduced pay, forcing some to skip meals or take on loans to buy food. Most live in slums near the park, sharing small rooms often without access to safe water.

Campaigners and unionists like Industrial Federation of Ethiopian Textile, Leather and Garment Worker Trade Unions have advocated the establishing of a statutory minimum wage to protect workers from such abuses, though the government's reluctance and COVID-19 have halted the process.

The union textile ministry plans to launch a new textile policy that would boost the domestic industry, promote cultivation, processing and branding of organic cotton, and set up hubs to manufacture machinery with the help of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), officials familiar with the matter said.

Textile secretary Ravi Capoor cited a Niti Aayog-led study that found Rs 13,000 crore worth machinery was being imported for the industry. Seven mega textile hubs are expected to be set up across the country as per the policy. The hubs will house end-to-end production, from raw material to export of the finished product. They will include a mega textile park spread over 1,000 hectare. The ministry will also set up a textile research institute in Coimbatore under the policy. The policy will seek a structural shift to make India a man-made fibre (MMF) rather than a cotton-driven industry.

The Union textile ministry also plans to launch Rs 10,000 crore production linked incentive scheme to encourage the industry. The ministry has identified 50 key sectors such as sanitary napkins and winterwear for the scheme with a five-year gestation period. It has removed the anti-dumping duty on purified terephthalic acid and acrylic fibre to boost the MMF sector.

Spanish finishing technology manufacturing company Jeanologia aims to dehydrate and detoxify the jeans industry by 2025 so that not one single jean being produced on the planet damages the planet or the big family of textile workers. The company has effectively navigated this crisis and will close the year by reaching revenues over €50 million and a profit of €5 million by end 2020.In the last five years the company grew between 30 and 40 per cent every year registering a growing EBITDA, and has now become a more agile and stronger.

Jeanologia has opened a new development hub in Hong Kong besides moving its US office from Houston to Miami where a new development center will be inaugurated by March 2021. Its new operational model is focused on sustainability, creativity and digitalization. The integration of Jeanologia technologies Laser, G2 ozone, eFlow, Smart Boxes and H2 Zero, with innovative software eDesigner and EIM allow the company to produce on demand, improving manufacturing costs and significantly reducing the time to market of new products.

For instance, the eDesigner software makes digital design and visualization of jeans finishing possible. This enables extraordinary collaboration between brands and their supply-chain partners that share the tools. Every player of the value chain can share creativity and achieve great results. Product development lead-time will be shortened by months, and the unnecessary expense of multiple physical sample iterations coming and going around the world will be eliminated while the final digital file containing the approved design can be sent to production centers around the world, or down the block, to accurately produce the jeans.

Revenues of Deckers Brands, a designer and distributer of innovative footwear and apparel, increased 15.0 per cent to $623.5 million during Q2 FY21 that ended on September 30, 2020, compared to the revenue of $542.2 million in the same period last year. The company’s net income during the quarter increased to $101.5 million as against $77.8 million in Q2 FY20. Its gross profit during the quarter rose to $318.9 million while its income from operations rose to $128.6 million.

Sales of UGG brand increased by 2.5 per cent to $415.1 million while those of Hoka One One brand increased by 83.2 per cent to $143.1 million. The sales of the Teva brand grew by 20.5 per cent to $27.7 million while that of Sanuk brand slipped by 11.4 per cent to $9.5 million. The company’s wholesale sales increased 1.8 per cent to $451.6 million whereas its DTC sales grew by 74.2 per cent to $171.9 million.

Affected by the pandemic, orders for spandex in pandemic prevention materials, fabrics for sportswear and casualwear and thermawear improved in 2020. As per CCF Group, the prices of spandex gradually touched bottom in Jan-Jul, 2020. Demand for spandex surged after August and the market entered prosperity cycle. By the end of 2020, price, profit, operating rate and stocks of spandex all apparently improved compared with the beginning of 2020. Spandex price even hit 5-year new high. The following are big events of spandex industrial chain noteworthy in 2020.

Spandex companies including Huafon Chemical, Tayho and Zhongbai donated emergent pandemic prevention materials China, as the biggest mask producer in the world, took a lead in resuming production and exported massive mask and protective clothing. The Hs code of mask and protective clothing was split from March 20

The original Hs code 6307900000 was split into 6307900010 (mask) and 6307900090 (cargoes not otherwise specified made from other textile materials).

The original Hs code 6210103000 was split into 6307900010 (mask) and 6210103010 (protective clothing made from chemical fibers). As of October 20, China has provided anti-epidemic assistance to 150 countries and seven international organizations, exporting more than 179 billion pieces of masks, 1.73 billion pieces of protective clothing and 543 million testing kits.

Unlike trade fairs with Premium, Neonyt and Co who plan to move Frankfurt by July next year, Berlin Fashion Week intends to hold its event as per schedule from January 18 to 24, 2021. The fashion week will be a hybrid event with digital events and face-to-face events with a highly limited number of participants.

As per Sportswear International, the new concept will focus on innovation, sustainability and digitalization. The event Fashion Open Studio/Fashion Revolution will be launched in cooperation with Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, which will offer a platform for sustainable fashion brands. In parallel, sustainability experts will work with the organizers and international stakeholders to develop a Berlin sustainability agenda, the results of which will be presented at the Berlin Fashion Summit in January 2021.

A part of the Berlin Fashion Week, the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week will be held digitally from January 18 to 20 – with live streams of catwalk shows as well as live digital talks. Designers for the event will include Tom Van Der Borght, Michael Sontag, Danny Reinke, Kilian Kerner and Rebekka Ruétz.

Tirrupur Exporters Association expects the garment cluster’s exports to reach around Rs 24,000 crore in the current fiscal. As per the association, India’s total garment exports declined by 4.08 per cent to Rs 109,844 crore in FY 2019-20 compared to Rs 112,828 crore in the previous fiscal. The association’s knitwear exports fell to Rs 53,199 crore during the year against Rs 54,692 crore in 2018-19.

At the association’s annual general meeting, Raja M Shanmugham, President, said export of textiles and textile products from Tamil Nadu grew to Rs 50,192 crore in fiscal in 2019-20 out of total manufactured product exports of Rs 2,12,863 crore whereas, the total knitted garments exports from the state was worth Rs 27,780 crore.

Knitwear exports from the state decreased to Rs 27,280 crore in 2019-20 against Rs 27,650 crore recorded in 2018-19. Delhi, Haryana and Karnataka held the second, third and fourth position in knitwear exports, with figures of Rs 5,284 crore, Rs 4,227 crore and Rs ,823 crore respectively.

A global organization committed to sustainability, Solidaridad has published a Wet ProcessingGuidebook for the Dutch Agreement on Sustainable Garments and Textile (AGT) focusing on the dyeing, printing and finishing industries

As per Sourcing Journal, established in 2016, the Dutch AGT is a five-year initiative to form better supply chain practices in the global garment sector. Its signatories include brands like C&A, Esprit and G-Star Raw as well as the Foreign Trade Association (FTA), along with other industry associations, trade unions, NGOs, and the National Government of the Netherlands.

The guidebook provides a comprehensive look at wet processing, outlining first what it is, as well as its environmental impacts, chemicals management and health and safety standards for employees. The guidebook provides a list tools and additional resources for reducing the use of resources and limiting waste every step of the way.

The guidebook comes at a time when the industry is challenged to develop supply-chain processes that use fewer resources and create less waste.

Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association (VITAS)has urged the Government to direct provinces with suitable infrastructures to build some large garment and textile parks with an area from 500 hectare to 1,000 hectare and centralized wastewater treatment systems to attract investors into the phases of weaving and dyeing; strengthen cooperation and linkages among enterprises producing raw materials and accessories and sewing ones to establish regional chains.

As per SGG News, Vietnamese garment exporters have received many orders, especially from the US market in the fourth quarter of this year. In the last few months of this year, Fly High Garment Co has received many orders that are enough to last until the third quarter of next year. However, raw materials have increased by about 20 percent forcing the company to recalculate processing unit prices with partners.

Many other enterprises also reflected that not only have materials in the garment industry been scarce, and have the prices of raw materials increased but some symbiotic sectors, such as packaging, adhesive tapes, and chemicals, have also risen by 15-20 percent, causing production costs to climb, leading to lower profits. Revenues of some enterprises are even just enough to cover expenses and labor costs.

Up to now, Vietnam has signed free trade agreements (FTAs) with many countries around the world so it can use raw materials from the members of these FTAs. However, Vietnamese enterprises have mainly used raw materials imported from China for a long time. When orders increase again, they become passive in organizing production because they did not have a timely forecast to prepare raw materials.

To limit the negative impacts on production and business, from the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, VITAS recommended and requested member enterprises to discuss with customers and focus on exploiting domestic raw materials and auxiliary materials, or from other countries to replace raw materials imported from China to maintain production and business.

As per QaziJamil Islam, Managing Director, Lotto Sport Italia, the ongoing pandemic has been a blessing for the company as it enjoyed increased sales in Bangladesh during the past several months following a boom in the demand for low-cost, non-leather footwear products. The global outbreak had forced Lotto Bangladesh to shut down its operations on March 23, three days ahead of a two-month nationwide lockdown aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19, reports the Daily Star.

At the time, Lotto employed nearly 1,300 people at its local production facility and since then Islam has recruited another 700 workers at a new facility to increase production and meet the growing demand.

When the lockdown was eventually lifted on May 30, many people took up jogging and other physical activities which led to the increased demand for low-cost washable footwear, in an effort improve their immune systems," Islam told The Daily star in a recent interview.

This led to the increased demand for low-cost washable footwear, he added. Lotto, which has 100 retail outlets and about 100 franchisee shops across the country, then took this opportunity to expand its market share.

The Italian sportswear brand even started producing face masks considering the demand for such items amid the current health crisis. Islam now plans to set up another factory in Tongi, where various sportswear such as jerseys and track suits will be produced.