The 2019 EURATEX convention focused on the challenges of globalisation, environmental impact and digitalisation, and how these challenges can be turned into opportunities. It addressed a number of topics crucial for the EU and Turkish textile and clothing industry ranging from trade tensions to circular economy and collaboration between designers and manufacturers. The convention featured European and Turkish entrepreneurs, international experts, designers and policy makers who discussed current and future scenarios in the textile and clothing sector.

The 2019 EURATEX convention was organised by the Turkish EURATEX members – TGSD (Turkish Clothing Manufacturers’ Association), TTSIS (Turkish Textile Employers’ Association), IHKIB (Turkish Apparel Exporters’ Association) and ITHIB (Turkish Textile & Raw Material Exporters’ Association). It was attended by over 500 visitors. Panel discussions, testimonials and insightful presentations at the convention allowed participants to have an overview of the sector in Turkey, and opportunities for collaboration both locally and internationally.

Indonesia’s textile sector hopes to be a beneficiary of the trade war between the US and China. The pay off could be a billion dollars or more. But cashing in on the seismic shift in global supply chains won’t be easy for the country’s textile makers. Indonesia is currently battling a slowing global demand for commodities. Indonesia saw exports slump for the tenth straight month in August. Indonesia seems to be lagging in terms of gains from trade diversion and from investments in the new supply chains despite its large labor force, competitive wages and ample land. Bureaucratic regulations, protective labor laws and high trade barriers are handicapping its draw. Indonesia has struggled in comparison to regional rivals in attracting companies wanting to shift out of China. Between June and August this year, 33 Chinese-listed companies announced plans to set up or expand production abroad, with 23 moving to Vietnam alone. The others shifted to Cambodia, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Serbia and Thailand. None moved to Indonesia.

Global firms are pivoting production out of China, which for decades was the world’s workshop. Companies are now scrambling to secure supply lines from other locations like Taiwan, Vietnam, and Bangladesh to skirt the tariffs on US-bound goods.

Stoll, SIFEC and SANDA unveiled a knitting training centre last month at the Shanghai International Fashion Education Centre. An educational platform, the Stoll Knitting Training Centre is jointly built by Shanghai International Fashion Education Centre (SIFEC), Stoll/Chemtax and Shanghai SANDA University (SANDA). The trains knitting design talents of art + technology. It also explores the educational mode of combining production, learning and research.

The Knitting Training Centre also provides knitting design talents with further education and product development in Shanghai and the Yangtze River Delta Region. In future, the centre will provide training to teachers, designers and technicians from the knitting industry with a goal of knitting knowledge transfer.

An internationally operating manufacturer of flatbed knitting machines in Germany, Stoll was founded in 1873 and has about 1,000 employees worldwide. It exports to more than 50 countries all over the world and offers integrated services through affiliated companies, sales and marketing centres and numerous agencies.

SIFEC is one of the few fashion education institutions with a complete fashion industry chain background. It has a powerful team of instructing experts and teachers in textiles and clothing industry and offers a brand-new development model for the perfect combination of novel fashion concepts and experience education.

The Milan Fashion Week hosted a conference to unveil the Denim Institute Milano on September 19, 2019. The conference entitled “Denim, Science, Ethic and Aesthetic” was held at Palazzo Marino and presented some of the partners of the newborn institute founded by Cristian Murianni, alongwith the key leaders of the denim industry.

DIM will collaborate with Milanese fashion school Istituto di Moda Burgo and Università Mercatorum. Its courses will be open to everyone and will its students an opportunity to learn about the denim business. The courses will start from the second week of November and will include the history of denim, tailoring lessons and laboratories organised inside companies. They will be conducted by specialists from the fabric, accessories and treatment industries.

On October 21, the institute will present the schedule of the courses along with a roundtable involving companies, consultants, influencers, designers, retailers and other experts.

Kitex Garments aims at being a top infant apparel manufacturer in the world. The plan is to diversify into socks for children, baby diapers and baby wet wipes. It is planning to add production capacity across the value chain, which includes an expansion of the knitting and processing capacity. The company is also considering setting up a cotton spinning mill for yarn production with a capacity of 100 tons per day. Plans are also afoot to set up a manufacturing facility for ancillary materials such as trims and packages, which includes cartons, tapes, paper tags, labels, hangers, woven tags etc. Kitex Garment is equipped with latest sewing machinery that ensures stain-free, quality sewing, and a state-of-the-art spectrophotometer that ensures electronic color reading and transmission.

The plant produces knitted fabrics that are of exceptional quality, well appreciated and recognized by reputed children’s wear brands in the US and Europe. Established in 1992 Kitex is totally into export of cotton and organic cotton garments, especially infant wear..

Over the last 10 years profit before tax has grown from eight per cent to 21 per cent and it has progressed in terms of technological, operational, human resources, products and social capabilities. Today Kitex is the second largest infant apparel manufacturer in the world.

Drexel University in the US has opened a center for functional fabrics. Engineers, designers, and other scholars are developing models and mass-production techniques for smart textiles that emit, transmit, communicate, and actuate using embedded sensors and other digital tools. It's a modern mini-factory with a warp knitting machine, flatbed knitting machines, circular knitting machines, a textile welding machine, a 3-D scanner loom, 3-D printers and laser printers. The aim is to create textiles of the future with tools of the future. The staff includes fashion designers, material scientists, and mechanical and civil engineers. Drexel is also working on a smart fabric belly band, with a configurable antenna and RFID system (like the antitheft tags in stores) that can detect breathing and contractions in patients not under the direct supervision of nursing staff. A handful of doctoral students are based at the center, along with master's candidates and undergraduate interns. The hope is to join electrical and materials engineering students, fashion designers, and biomedical specialists to learn trans-disciplinary teamwork as well as textile and computing design.

Fabric studded with sensors and entire computing systems is a staple of science fiction and tech promotion. But after years of experiments and lab use, there are few such functional fabric products in commercial production.

Welspun is stepping into advanced textiles segment. The big bet on advanced textiles includes making disposable towels out of non-woven textiles and filters for the auto and power sector. Advanced textiles will broadbase Welspun’s clientele by adding sectors such as auto, healthcare and FMCG.

The company is known for bed sheets and towels and has introduced reversible bed sheets and quick-dry towels. It is one of the largest suppliers of home textiles to retailers like Walmart, Costco and others. The company also sells premium licensed brand products like Wimbeldon, Nickelodeon and Disney. Branded products account for 17 per cent of its revenues. Another emerging business segment is flooring. Welspun is looking at offering luxury performance tiles, wall-to-wall carpets and artificial grass for offices and cricket fields. Currently, most wall-to-wall carpets, carpet tiles and luxury performance tiles are exported from China, USA, Belgium and Thailand. But, floorings is a huge market that Welspun now wants to cater to.

Besides retail channels, the company is also eyeing hospitality and e-commerce as future growth drivers. Growth in fiscal ’19 was in single-digit but with new products and a focus on newer channels, Welspun expects a double-digit growth this fiscal. The company expects a revenue of Rs 10,000 crores over the next four to five years.

Indian cotton prices are trading easy with the prospects of bumper crop, increasing daily arrivals and a financial crunch in the market. Spinning mills have not been able to build cotton inventories yet as the yarn market remains sluggish. Rains in September and October can affect the arrival pace and somewhere some quality concern can be seen, but this will depend on intensity and frequency of rains. Of the daily cotton arrivals, most of the cotton is coming from north India.

This year, Cotton Corporation of India’s sourcing strategies will be very crucial to give direction to the market. The CCI will have to get active and buy a good amount of Indian cotton, failing which Indian cotton will trade lower than the minimum support price. This will create fewer export possibilities and can also give immediate support to Indian spinning mills. Lower cotton prices will make Indian yarn competitive. The ban on trade with Pakistan has taken out around a million cotton bales from expected export numbers for the crop year 2019-20. That will directly be a surplus in India.

Meanwhile, India needs to come up with some export promotion policies for the textile industry and brighten the dull scenario.

The turnover of Vietnam’s textile and garment export industry has increased 16.01 per cent against the previous year. Export turnover of the garment sector was up 14.45 per cent. Turnover of fabric exports was up by 25.5 per cent. Yarn export was up by 9.9 per cent. The trade surplus of the garment sector increased 14.39 per cent. The income surge has been attributed to a shift of manufacturing units from China to Vietnam. Foreign investment has also increased in Vietnam.

Once the free trade agreement with the EU comes into force, investments in Vietnam’s textile and garment industry are expected to increase further. The garment export surge seen by Vietnam this year has been the maximum in the past three years. It was 12.1 per cent in 2015, 4.07 per cent in 2016 and 10.8 per cent in 2017. There are over 2,000 textile and garment projects in the country. Vietnam’s supply chain diversification has been happening for a few years already, mainly driven by rising labor costs in China. Even before the trade war, Vietnam was getting attention because of the proximity to China and because of the existing infrastructure in the country. The full supply chain has been set up in the country for the past decade already.

Imports of cheap yarn from countries such as China and Indonesia are hurting India’s textile industry. A large number of small and medium yarn producing units are on the brink of closure.

Owing to the US-China trade war as well as free trade agreements with Asean countries that allow duty-free imports into the country, viscose staple fiber yarn imports into India have surged about 200 per cent in the first five months of this financial year. China, with its excess capacity, has been at the forefront of exports, followed by Indonesia, driving down the price of VSF yarn. At the same time, demand for yarn has remained steady, growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 14 per cent in the past five years. Excess capacity in China is more than the Indian demand for the fiber and with so much oversupply through cheaper imports, domestic manufacturers are forced to match the low price that is taxing them heavily. To have a level playing field the industry wants the import duty on VSF yarn to be hiked from five per cent to at least ten per cent.

There are around 600 small, micro and medium enterprises engaged in the spinning of yarn, which is used to make a fabric that finds use in garment-making.