Primark plans to open more than 1million sq ft of new selling space in the coming year, with stores planned in mainland Europe as well as in the UK, including its biggest to date, a 160,000 sq ft branch in Birmingham Pavilions. According to the long-running survey by research firm GfK, sales at Primark stores turned negative in November 2018. Consumer confidence dropped 3 to -13 per cent, the lowest level this year.

As Barclaycard reveals overall consumer spending during the month rose by 3.3 per cent year on year in November, the lowest growth since March, despite the boost from Black Friday, clothing spending contracted by 2.9 per cent, the biggest fall since October 2017, while spending on household appliances declined by 14 per cent.

Famed for its “cheap chic”, careful stock management, coupled with improved clothing profit margins is expected to bring Primark back on the track for bigger profits in the coming year.

The National Association for Clothing and Textile (ATP) together with the agency for investment and external commerce from Portugal (AICEP) organised a promotional event in Brussels to brand the Portuguese sustainable fashion and convince Belgian investors to invest in Portugal. Fashion from Portugal 4.0 is the brand new campaign for the upcoming years. In 2016, ATP focused its attention in four main markets: Germany, Spain, the Nordic countries and the United States. The excellence of the previous project exceeded all expectations and received the European Enterprise Promotion Award (EEPA). ATP aims to reinforce its position in those markets and invest in new ones; namely Belgium.

Multiple companies, designers and investors from Belgium attended the ATP meet in Belgium. Portuguese Ambassador António Alves Machado underlined that 2018 is an important year for the relationship between Belgium and Portugal.

After a meeting last week during the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires, President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to work towards more common ground on trade over the next 90 days, during which no new tariffs will be added and no existing tariffs will be increased. Negotiations have already begun and both nations are working toward a deal.

US companies paid a total of $6.2 billion in tariffs in October—$2.8 billion as a result of new Trump Administration-induced tariffs, according to industry coalition Tariffs Hurt the Heartland. That’s the highest monthly amount paid in tariffs in US history, and double what businesses paid in October 2017.

However, tariffs aren’t working as the US president intended. The impact, rather, appears to be largely adverse for the US economy.Imports subject to new tariffs declined by just 0.6 per cent in October, while US exports subject to retaliation fell 37 percent.

The Union government has announced revised duty drawback rates. These All Industry Rates of Duty Drawback re-imburse the incidence of duties of customs on inputs and remnant central excise duty on specified petroleum products used for generation captive power for manufacture or processing of export goods. The drawback rates for cotton textiles such has yarn, fabrics and made ups have been increased.

Welcoming the announcement, KV Srinivasan, Chairman of The Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council (TEXPROCIL) said the revised drawback rates will lead to increase in the exports of cotton textiles. There is a significant increase in the drawback rates for cotton made ups which will encourage export of value added products like home textiles. Further, the removal of drawback caps in the case of those export products where the drawback rates are less than 2 per cent will benefit the cotton textiles exporters.

As per Online Apparel Market Research report, China is expected to be the highest online apparel market by 2025 exceeding the US. China consists of biggest online retail sector marking close to a third of all business to commerce ecommerce sales and booming at double-digit numbers.

North America captured the highest share in the global online apparel market in 2018. In North America, particularly in the US apparel is the second largest product category in online retails market in terms of sales volume. Amongst all regions, Asia-Pacific is the rapidly growing market, projected to clock in highest CAGR till 2025 surpassing Europe in terms of total online sales by 2025. Improvement in internet penetration as well as infrastructure in the emerging markets such as India and China will impel growth of global online apparel market over the next few years.

The Asia-Pacific will occupy more market share in following years, especially in China, India and Southeast Asia regions.

The International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) officially closed its 77th Plenary Meeting in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire with few announcements including the acceptance of the meeting’s final statement by the steering committee. This statement included ICAC’s three-year Strategic Plan. The plan, developed over the course of the prior 12 months, establishes a starting point that will ensure the organisation is on track to meet its future goals, and was passed unanimously.

The Steering Committee also agreed that next year’s Technical Seminar will focus on Traceability Technologies, and explore the ways international seed exchange can help create new varieties that are ideally suited to flourish in the future — especially in light of new challenges such as climate change. ICAC also accepted an invitation from the government of Australia to hold the 78th Plenary Meeting from December 2-6, 2019 in Brisbane.

The 77th Plenary Meeting featured more than a dozen open and breakout sessions, covering topics such as combating pest resistance to biotech cotton; the use of drones and robots on small-scale farms; the additional revenue farmers can generate from cotton by-products; and ICAC’s #TruthAboutCotton campaign to counter the misleading claims that are being made about the cotton industry in the media.

From November 8 to 11, four companies of Texbrasil (Brazilian Textile and Fashion Industry Internationalization Program) – held through a partnership between Abit(Brazilian Textile and Apparel Industry Association) and Apex-Brasil (Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency) – participated in Expotextil Peru 2018, in Lima. These companies of the Hyosung Group; Santa Constancia Tecelagem, Dalila Textil, Audaces and Creora companies displayed their latest products and garnered $830,000 in business. In addition, the companies also made 245 new contacts during the event.

According to Lilian Kaddissi, Executive Manager at Texbrasil, the event provided a great opportunity to foster business in the country, whose economy is very strong right now, in the textile sector as well as in the apparel and home fabrics sectors.

According to a report by Taiwan Spinners’ Association from January 2018 to July 2018, Taiwan imported 366,159 bales of US cotton, representing a market share of 81.6 per cent. At the Taipei In Style (TIS) trade show in Taiwan, Cotton Council International (CCI) promoted US cotton's sustainability and featured US cotton-rich clothing from two Cotton USA licensed brands. Mobo presented women’s wear and Les Enphants showcased children’s wear via a “Look Closer at COTTON USA” fashion show for 500 guests.

The COTTON USA videos introduced US cotton farming and highlights from Cotton Day events to visitors and designers from Asia. Taiwan spokesperson Cindy Yen performed a new COTTON USA theme song at the fashion show, which aimed to inspire everyone in the textile business to use more U.S. cotton.

Many COTTON USA licensees attended the fashion show, as well as a seminar which featured keynote speakerSulee Tsai, Dean & Professor of Fu Jen Catholic University. After the trade show, four brands applied to use the COTTON USA™ Mark.

The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has slashed duty drawback rates from 2 to 1.8 percent for cotton garments. For polyester, the new duty drawback rates will be 2.3 per cent from 2.5 per cent earlier. The new drawback rates will be effective from December 19, 2018.

Exporters noted there has been a marginal increase in business for the past couple of months mainly due to dollar appreciation but the industry is far behind the 2016-17 level. They advised the government to stop raw cotton export to boost exports.

Apparel exporters are required to use various inputs for making garments. About 70 per cent of the material consumed is cotton, which is agri-product coming from farming sector and out of GST ambit. It comes loaded with embedded taxes, which the farmer has to pay for production and transportation of cotton.

During the production process of fabric and garments, electricity gets consumed which is also embedded in the cost of garment. Expenses are incurred on fuel and transportation, exporters said, giving reasons for losing market share in the international market. All these add to the input cost and leads to losing competition especially with China.

CAI, which released its November estimate of the cotton crop for the season 2018-19, beginning from October 1, 2018 has estimated cotton crop for the 2018-19 season at 340.25 lakh bales (of 170 kg each). This is lower by 3 lakh bales than its previous estimate of 343.25 lakh bales made during last month.

The CAI has projected a total cotton supply during the months of October and November at 95 lakh bales, which consists of arrivals of 70 lakh bales upto November 30, 2018. Imports are around 2 lakh bales upto November 30 and the opening stock at the beginning of the season has been put at 23 lakh bales.

The estimate of cotton consumption during the months of October and November is 54 lakh bales while the export shipment of cotton upto November 30 has been estimated at 10 lakh bales. The stock at the end of November is estimated at 31 lakh bales, including 27 lakh bales with textile mills and the remaining 4 lakh bales are estimated to be held by CCI and others.

The projected annual balance sheet for the season 2018-19 drawn by the CAI has estimated total cotton supply, till end of the season upto September 30, 2019, at 390.25 lakh bales.