As per a Reuters report, EU countries will contribute over €100 million to a Bangladeshi welfare program to aid thousands of garment workers hit by job losses and pay cuts during the coronavirus pandemic.

The EU is the biggest market for clothing made in Bangladesh, which saw billions of dollars in orders cancelled or put on hold as fashion brands shuttered stores earlier this year - taking a heavy toll on garment factory employees.

Under Bangladesh’s new social protection program, workers in the garment, leather and footwear industries will initially be given monthly cash aid of 3,000 taka ($35.30) for three months. Germany and the EU - which provided emergency aid to garment workers in Myanmar earlier this year – will provide €13 million to the Bangladeshi scheme. Cancelled clothing orders have caused wage losses of up to $5.8 billion among garment workers worldwide, according to pressure group Clean Clothes Campaign.

Bangladesh - the world’s second largest clothing exporter - has recovered some orders in recent months, but factory bosses have said the second wave of COVID-19 infections in many key markets is slowing orders and leading some brands to defer payments.

About four million people work in Bangladesh’s garment industry, most of them women, and the sector is a motor of the national economy.

Karl Mayer Group’s acquisition of Stoll earlier this year has integrated the two company’s North American subsidiaries. Stoll America’s operation in New York City will be integrated into Karl Mayer’s Greensboro, North Carolina location. This process started in October 2020 and will be completed by the end of the year.

The Stoll core team in its new location will include business and technical management, textile design and product development, Stoll machine programming, and customer service. Some team members will relocate from New York and others will be new. The team’s focus will be twofold - serving the needs of the Stoll machine market with innovative machines, spare parts and technical service and equally important, innovation support services to customers, brands, incubators, start-ups and educational institutions. These support services include textile product design and development, sample, prototype and small collection production and training.

For these new activities, Karl Mayer is making a major investment in the Greensboro building, adding a state-of-the-art textile development and visitor centre. The centre will have customer collaboration and training areas with end-product samples, Stoll machines for demonstration, training and production purposes, and a prototype finishing and assembly operation. The new centre will offer similar collaboration opportunities for industry partners working with other Karl Mayer technologies. It is planned to be completed in March 2021.

Burberry has unveiled the ReBurberry Fabric Initiative for which it will team up with the British Fashion Council (BFC) to donate leftover fabrics to fashion students in the United Kingdom.

Through this initiative, Burberry plans to put its leftover materials to good use and support the next generation of diverse voices across the country.

Caroline Rush, CEO, BFC’s says, one of the primary goals of the initiative as a whole – which the fashion trade group hopes to roll out to all British brands following its pilot with Burberry – is to move toward a circular fashion economy while supporting excellence in fashion design.

Burberry’s newly-announced ReBurberry Fabric Initiative is part of a larger effort by the fashion industry to remedy the pollution-inducing and the largely unsustainable nature of the high-volume, novelty-based system that is seasonal fashion.

As tensions with China mount, Australia seeks to boost demand for its cotton from countries such as Vietnam.

In October, China ordered its cotton mills to stop buying Australian cotton, threatening a trade worth about A$900 million ($672.30 million) amid escalating tensions between the two countries. producers didn't immediately feel the impact, however, as their country had little stocks to sell after a sustained drought led to record low production.

But since then, rains soaked Australia's east coast, and the country's growers are on course to produce 506,000 tonne of cotton - the highest since 2018 - leaving exporters scrambling to find alternative markets.

Australia will begin harvesting its 2020/21 crop in April, giving exporters several months to line up new customers.

Australia's relationship with China soured in 2018 when it became the first country to ban China's Huawei from its 5G network, and worsened this year when Australia called for an enquiry into the origins of the coronavirus.

As ties deteriorated, China imposed tariffs on Australian barley and slowed its imports of Australian beef and coal.

Global Fashion Agenda CEO Eva Kruse has decided to step down after 15 successful years. As per reports, Kruse will now join Panagaia, a material science company. However, she will continue to be on the board of directors of Global Fashion Agenda, which she helped shape from an idea around sustainable fashion into a professionally managed foundation.

Global Fashion Agenda’s nomination committee is currently conducting a systematic search process for a new CEO that will implement and build on the successful strategy signed off by the board in 2018. In the meantime, the foundation will be jointly led by Travis Peoples, Chief Operating Officer, and Niels Eskildsen, Chairman.

Global Fashion Agenda aims to mobilize the international fashion industry to transform the way it produces and consumes fashion. It organizes the Copenhagen Fashion Summit which offers a meeting platform for the fashion sector’s decision-makers and creatives to learn from and engage with industry frontrunners, leading NGOs, experts, policy-makers and academia, and come together on making sustainability a strategic priority.

International Apparel Federation recently held a digital ‘pre-event’ for 36th IAF World Fashion Convention. The event was aimed to start a global, industry wide and in-depth conversation on the Convention’s theme: ‘Transition in the Global Fashion System’. It comprised four separate online sessions with a range of partners, including Dutch association Modint, London College of Fashion, ITMF and MOTIF, etc.

The event included six movie clips recorded by prominent IAF members giving their vision on the theme of transition from a diverse range of industry perspectives including buying relations, technology, standardization and education.

To be held June 7 and 8, 2021 in Antwerp, Belgium, the 36th IAF Fashion Convention will continue to push its message of full supply chain collaboration through its global projects, its global network building and its messaging.

A new report by Changing Markets Foundation, Clean Clothes Campaign, Ethical Consumer, WeMove.EU and Fashion Revolution says, global luxury brands are lagging behind in making less toxic viscose. The report evaluated 100 brands and retailers for their commitments and progress on cleaner production of viscose and other man-made cellulosic materials like modal and rayon The results show while there is more attention on viscose compared to a few years ago, there is still much work to do.

Brands like Versace, Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Giorgio Armani, Michael Kors, Nike and Forever 21, ranked lowest in their credible viscose-specific policy for safer chemical management. The worst-ranked companies have no meaningful policy on viscose and disclose nothing about their supply chain, claims Urška Trunk, Campaign Manager, Changing Markets while the top ranking companies, including Levi Strauss & Co, Reformation, Esprit, H&M, Inditex and M&S, have concrete commitments to clean up their viscose supply chains by 2025.

To contain the spread of COVID-19, China held a fashion show last week end to showcase latest trends in personal protective gear and equipment. As per reports, the China-Dandong Fashion Week was held in China’s northeastern province of Liaoning. It showcased hazmat suits and other protective equipment.

At the start of the pandemic, several protective gears exported by China had failed to pass the safety test and turned out to be faulty. Several nations including Spain, Turkey, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Britain and India had reported that the PPE kits imported from China were found to be faulty.

The health authorities in Spain, Turkey, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Britain reportedly paid millions of dollars to Chinese companies to secure the protective equipment but the kits received by them turned out to be defective. The Netherlands snapped up 600,000 masks from China, only to find out later that they did not meet the required quality standards.

Textiles pioneer Brands Fashion has bagged German Sustainability Award in the ‘Global Corporate Partnerships’ category. Europe’s market leader in sustainable workwear Brand Fashion was awarded for its use of sustainable materials and a resource-saving approach to protect the environment. The company also aims to acquire the Faitrade Textile Standard certification by May 2021. It already holds renowned certifications such as the GOTS, Fairtrade Cotton Standard and Grüner Knopf labels.

Endorsed by the Federal Government of Germany, The German Sustainability Award is given to one of over 800 candidates and is the most prestigious prize of its kind in Europe. The jury estimated that Brands Fashion’s collaboration with Sags Apparels and the creation of the Green Factory had truly laid a milestone in the field of sustainability. It particularly admired the company’s joint efforts towards a holistic, closed production cycle: from the usage of sustainable materials and a resource-saving approach to protect the environment, all the way to improvements in workers’ social and ecological conditions.

A study by Persistent Market Research predicts Asia will record strong growth in the global surgical apparel market over the next five years. As per the study, the fastest rising surgical apparel markets in the Asia-Pacific region are China and India. Growth in these markets is being driven by the growth of their healthcare industry, a wide pool of patients, and rising healthcare spending.

As per a Textile Focus report, factors driving growth of the global surgical apparel market include, growing prevalence of infections and increasing number of surgical procedures. Rising frequency of hospital-acquired infections also fuels the development of the global demand for surgical apparel. However, strict regulations and unstable raw material prices limit the development of the industry which offers advanced composite, biophonic fiber and non-conventional gloves.