Twenty-one brands and buyers from North America, who were signatories of Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, recently launched a new platform, Nirapon, for safety monitoring in the Bangladesh readymade garment (RMG) units that supply them.

Nirapon will use a brand-led approach to monitor safety, oversight and reporting services for its members based on Bangladesh laws to help the factories build their own self-sustaining culture of safety, according to Bangla media reports. Factories would provide regular updates, including documentary evidence, to the brands and to Nirapon of their performances in those areas and work with vetted, local training and engineering firms who would conduct regular safety and training audits.

Over 600 factories are part of this initiative. All Nirapon member factories are required to continue to meet the National Action Plan harmonised standards for structural, fire, and electrical safety and all the factories would have to implement standardised training programmes focused on worker safety, she said. While Alliance had worked directly with factories to drive remediation and training programmes, Nirapon’s role would be of oversight and independent verification of safety and training compliance and reporting those results to its members.

American & Efird (A&E) has a new line of advanced identification threads called Integrity. These are molecular-tagged DNA threads. One of the big challenges brands face today centers around authenticity. Loss of revenue, reputation, and brand trust are some of the potential outcomes of counterfeit products. This thread line provides a tool which adds advanced identification for greater visibility and transparency into the product creation process.

A&E is a manufacturer of industrial and consumer sewing threads, embroidery threads and technical textiles. Through its global network, A&E’s products are manufactured in 22 countries, distributed in 50 countries and sold in over 100 countries. A&E supports many of the world’s top industrial and consumer brands with thread products that require strict quality and performance. The textile thread manufacturer achieved its initial targets for zero-waste-to-landfill in 2015. American & Efird has also launched a new recycled polyester sewing thread. This is designed especially for athletic wear and high-performance apparel. The new thread is derived from recycled post-consumer plastic bottles and aims to provide textile manufacturers within the performance apparel, active wear, athleisure, and intimate apparel markets a recycled alternative to existing sewing threads. The air-entangled sewing thread is made with Repreve recycled polyester, a brand of US yarn supplier Unifi.

According to the average estimate among analysts surveyed by Bloomberg ahead of the US World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report, the 2019-2020 U.S crop will expand to 21.8 million bales from 18.4 million the previous season. In March, the USDA had forecast that cotton acres would decline to 13.8 million for the 2019-2020 season from 14.1 million a year earlier. Still, anecdotal evidence in states including Texas and Oklahoma suggests the fiber cultivation will increase to 14 million acres nationally.

Relatively low prices for competing crops and rainy weather causing planting delays for corn may make the fiber an attractive alternative.

The US wants India to remove both tariff and non-tariff barriers for American companies and eliminate data localisation restrictions that weaken data security and increase the cost of doing business. US businesses complain of facing significant market access barriers in India. These include both tariff and non-tariff barriers, as well as multiple practices and regulations that disadvantage foreign companies. The US feels India’s average applied tariff rate of 13.8 per cent is the highest of any major world economy. While India’s import duty on ICT products such as network routers and switches and parts of cellular phones is as high as 20 per cent, the US rate for these same products is zero. India has countered by saying that domestic support per farmer in the US is a massive 267 times India’s and that huge subsidies have led to a competitive advantage of farm products of developed countries in the global market, which has forced developing ones like India to offer limited tariff protection to their farmers from the onslaught of heavily subsidised imports. The US imposes very high import duties on several products, including 350 per cent on tobacco and 164 per cent on peanuts.

US exports of goods to India last year jumped by 29 per cent while India’s exports to the US rose 12 per cent.

Oritain, a product and supply chain traceability specialist has mapped all Supima cotton growing regions. This will help the cotton industry to root out fraud in the global supply chain. With over 500 licensees in more than 45 countries, Supima partners with over 200 brand/retailers around the globe that use Supima cotton. Using Oritain’s forensic technology, these licensees can test and authenticate the origin of their Supima products at any stage in the supply chain, revealing if it has been blended or substituted and ensuring the product’s provenance. By testing the intrinsic natural properties of the cotton, Oritain identifies a unique distinguishing fingerprint for each product verifying where it was grown. Unlike other traceability methods, this fingerprint cannot be forged or altered and is unique to the land the cotton was grown on.

Global luxury group Kering has implemented Oritain’s services to verify that Supima cotton used in its garments is Supima cotton, woven and dyed by Albini. The partnership has produced the world’s first 100 per cent traceable organic Supima cotton by testing the cotton at every stage of production, from field to the retail floor, the company reports.

Garment Show of India (GSI) will be held in New Delhi from July 8 to 10, 2019. This is an exhibition for readymade garments, fabrics, accessories and fashion. The exhibition connects suppliers and buyers looking for quality and reasonably priced garments. The show is seen as an important platform for the booming apparel retail industry of India. Special pavilions will be created for men’s, women’s, children’s, active wear, inner wear, fashion accessories and many more. Some of the product categories that will be on display will include kurtis, ethnic wear, coats, blazers, jackets, trousers, party wear, athletic wear, wedding wear, T-shirts, shirts, tops, dresses, skirts and many more in cotton, knitted and woven. Manufacturers from Tirupur, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Indore, Mumbai, Noida and many more hubs of apparel will be participating.

Retailers, manufacturers and retail chains will be facilitated for their performance. Experts from fashion, retail and e-commerce will throw light on India’s domestic retail industry, its opportunities and threats.

Garment Show of India is being organised by Saina Events. Nationwide road shows are being conducted to promote the event. Digital media, newspapers and magazines, hoardings, radio ads and online marketing tools are being used to promote the event on a very large scale.

Jack Mathews and Lisa Valente have joined Kaltex America. Jack Mathews is senior vice president of denim. He will lead the company in strategic initiatives for the denim fabric division. He has spent more than 30 years in the denim industry and has held executive positions at Cone Mills, American Cotton Growers and most recently at Artistic Denim Mills. He has also held leadership positions in various industry associations, including the Cotton Board and American Apparel Producers Network, and served as a delegate on the National Cotton Council.

Lisa Valente has been brought on board as chief merchandising officer of apparel. She will lead Kaltex’s strategic apparel growth efforts in the US and Europe. She has held various retail leadership positions with Old Navy, Sears Holdings Corporation and Kohl’s department stores. She brings 25 years of denim manufacturing experience, including private-label brand development, global fabric research and wash development, cost engineering and merchandising.

Kaltex American is a division of Grupo Kaltex, a Mexican-owned, vertically integrated textile company that produces a range of fibers, yarns, fabrics, apparel and home textile products. Over the past year, the company has been strengthening its team in New York and in Mexico to successfully implement its strategy and take advantage of market opportunities.

The order index for Italian textile machinery carried out by ACIMIT for January-March 2019 period dropped by 3 per cent compared to the same period of the previous year. Italian textile machinery manufacturers recorded declining orders on foreign markets, where orders fell by 11 per cent. This slowdown is a result of a deep rooted feeling of uncertainty currently permeating the global economy.

On the domestic front, orders increased by 84 per cent compared to the first quarter 2018. Investments in the textile sector have benefitted from the push towards a greater degree of digitalisation in production processes, thanks to the fiscal incentives. As per ACIMIT President Alessandro Zucchi, Italy’s domestic market is experiencing a dynamic showing similar to late 2017. Investments in the textile sector have benefitted from the push towards a greater degree of digitalization in production processes, thanks to the fiscal incentives. However, foreign markets, slowdown is a result of a deep rooted feeling of uncertainty currently permeating the global economy with multiple pressures on global trade in different geographical areas.

“We had already predicted a slowdown for early 2019, in line with what was observed in 2018,” concludes Zucchi. “The entire sector is waiting to see what happens at ITMA, the leading world trade fair for our sector, which will be held in Barcelona this coming 20 – 26 June. There will verify whether a recovery is effectively under way in global demand for textile machinery.”

Factories in Ethiopia making clothes for top global brands pay their workers far less than counterparts in other low-paying countries says the Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.

Ethiopia has no official minimum wage for the private sector. The low monthly wage paid to garment workers in Ethiopia does not cover their basic needs. Even after additional payments of attendance bonuses and expenses for food and transportation, most workers struggle to get by. As a result of the dissatisfaction among the workforce, factories replace all of their workers every 12 months on an average, pushing training costs up and efficiency down.

Ethiopia is Africa’s second most populous country, with about 105 million people who still largely survive off agriculture. Hawassa Industrial Park is one of five manufacturing hubs in Ethiopia. It is the largest specialized apparel and textile park in Africa and was built in just nine months, with Chinese help. The park has modern halls where leather and textile products are produced for the European and American markets. The park has 25,000 workers and there are plans to increase the workforce to 60,000. Many young women working at the sites receive very little training and face cultural conflicts with managers from south or east Asia.

Bangladesh Denim Expo was held on May 2 and 3, 2019. It provided endless possibilities of networking. The expo set to create a space where 63 exhibitors from 11 countries represented the very best from the local and international denim community. Circularity was emphasized in this edition of the expo. The event included informative seminars, stimulating workshops and engaging round table discussions on circularity. Denim was in the spotlight in many of the seminars had as their focus denim circularity. Additionally, the traditional indigo fabric was the center of attention of live demonstrations on how to machine and hand repair jeans, transforming them into works of art.

Bangladesh Denim Expo is a non-profit, specifically established to act as a hub where key denim industry players can congregate and share their passion for denim. Launched in November 2014 with the intention of creating an international cutting-edge denim community in Bangladesh, the expo takes place two times a year and has shown a constant increase in numbers since then. The expo celebrates the country’s role in shaping the denim scene today. The expo’s objective is to showcase Bangladesh’s growth potential in the denim industry. Bangladesh is well-known for denim and jeans production, for both niche and mass markets. Buyers respect Bangladesh’s ability to offer great margins and high-quality goods.