The textile industry in India is shifting gears from linear to circular operations.

Manufacturers are making concerted efforts to introduce sustainability by using innovative materials, safe dyes, reducing water and energy consumption, treating waste material and ensuring a greater focus on reducing, reusing and recycling, ensuring that both pre-consumer and post-consumer waste are controlled. Zero Liquid Discharge, for instance, is a wastewater treatment process that removes all liquid discharge from a system. Apart from prioritising organic fabrics, the focus of the sector is all about conserving the natural environment.

Other projects, like processing PET bottles to make recycled polyester fibers, are also underway.This has triggered the movement towards slow fashion that works on a‘fit-to-demand model, reducing surplus and investing in garments that have a long life.With new innovations like 3D printing and new age fabrics made from hemp and bamboo, these changes come as first steps in a long journey towards sustainability.

With the high environmental impact, but large room for improvement, it is very probable that measures to implement sustainability in the textiles sector will have a significant impact.The textile industry in India, which has a four percent share of the global trade in textiles and apparel, is expected to grow by a compound ten percent a year till 2026.

Guangzhou’s large wholesale fabric market has been hit by low demand rather than the epidemic.

As of November 13, 707 new confirmed cases and 3,941 new asymptomatic infections were reported in Guangdong province, mainly concentrated in Guangzhou. Factories in Guangzhou areshut or running with limited operations. Though the epidemic has caused regional disruptions in production and distribution, lack of demand is the main reason for the depressed market. There has been no increase in orders from markets that have been unsealed.

Hanzheng Street in Wuhan, China Textile City in Shaoxing, China Oriental Silk Market in Suzhou, Nantong Folded Stone Bridge and other major cloth and garment markets are currently less affected by the epidemic, but market transactions are still thin. Factory orders have not improved significantly after the end of the epidemic control.Downstream finished goods inventory pressure is high, and the operating rate has gradually declined.

The high inventory of filament is mainly due to the obvious weakness of downstream demand, as grey fabric, textile and clothing are all under high inventory pressure. In China domestic sales of textile and clothing have gradually weakened and at the same time export orders have not improved. Domestic sales of filament declined rapidly in November.

Indorama’s Deja has won the Chemical Week award. Deja is the world’s first carbon-neutral virgin polyethylene terephthalate resinaimed at reducing environmental impact. These are the world’s first certified carbon-neutral virgin PET pellets. The Deja brand covers carbon neutral virgin and recycled PET resins and a range of recycled PET products, including flakes, resins, fibers, and yarns.It provides Indorama’s global customers with a range of high-performance applications, including packaging, lifestyle, automotive, apparel, and medical equipment.

The solutions help environmentally conscious companies meet their sustainability goals. Deja supports the UN Sustainable Development Goals of promoting a sustainable, greener circular economy. Chemical company Indorama Ventureshas set ambitious 2025 and 2030 targets, which are expected to be met through its six-pronged decarbonization strategy, including energy transition, improving operational efficiency, circular feedstock, and future technologies.

The company also has a goal to recycle 100 billion PET bottles annually by 2030.Chemical Week Sustainability Awards recognize the industry’s best efforts in addressing financial, operational, and strategic challenges by focusing on ESG and sustainable product development. The awards were assessed by S&P Global, the world’s leading credit rating agency, and a panel of experts from various companies across the chemical industry’s value chain.

Value fashion retail giant Primark has opened three new stores in the United States.

The target is to reach 60 US stores by 2026. As of now there are a total of 16 US stores and a worldwide tally of 411 stores. Primark first entered the US in 2015,introducing its products to a myriad Americans, thirsty for its everyday low price model, a system different from the majority of other US retailers who operate with extensive discounting, promotions and coupons. The Irish retailer continues to pursue the American dream at a slow pace. The US market is the biggest market in terms of fashion sales and one of the most complex alongside the high competition.

Primark is a company that only operates with physical stores amid an era driven by digitalization and e-commerce. The Irish fast fashion chain’s jeans collection designed in line with the Ellen MacArthur Jeans Redesign guidelines uses organic cotton and recycled content. The collection meets all of the Jeans Redesign standards, with adult jeans in the collection made from either 70 per cent organic cotton, 29 per cent recycled cotton and one per cent elastane, or 70 per cent organic cotton and 30 per cent recycled cotton. Children’s jeans are made of 78 per cent organic cotton, 20 per cent recycled cotton and two per cent elastane.

Bangladesh Denim Expo was held November 15 to 16, 2022.

It was a grand event showcasing the entire value chain, creating a platform for connecting with people who love, appreciate, and care for denim.The trade show featured businesses from around the world spanning textiles, machinery, and technology, with a focus on sustainability. The event hosted renowned global denim manufacturers, industry leaders, sustainability practitioners, and the latest technology adopters from all around the world,brought businesses together, enabled meaningful collaborations, and kept participants updated with global denim fashion trends and manufacturing techniques.

Denim offers Bangladesh great prospects. Bangladesh’s next business is denim. With the huge demand from global retailers and brands, the country has established some 30 denim mills. These meet 40 per cent of the demand for denim fabrics from garment makers. The remaining demand is met through imports, mainly from China, India, Turkey and Pakistan.Bangladesh has overtaken China in denim supply to the EU countries because of quality products at competitive prices.Due to the focus on sustainability Bangladesh denim fabric makers have dramatically reduced water consumption over the last few years with the adoption of the latest technologies in production. The target is to reduce water consumption by 80 per cent in the denim making process.

UK retail sales volumes rose by 0.6 per cent in October 2022 compared to the previous month.

So says the Office for National Statistics. The value of retail sales rose 1.8 per cent compared to the previous month. Looking purely at volumes and on a month-on-month basis, increases were seen in all of the main sectors apart from food stores. Non-food stores sales volumes rose by 1.1 per cent. Clothing stores sales volumes rose by 2.5 per cent month on month but were 3.7 per cent below their February 2020 levels. And department stores volumes fell by 0.3 per cent. The proportion of retail sales taking place online was 26.1 per cent, a broadly consistent level since May 2022.

Online sales of textiles, clothing and footwear were down 8.4 per cent compared to a year ago and down 2.7 per cent compared to September, while department store sales online were down 6.8 per cent compared to a year ago and 1.7 per cent against the previous month. But although there was an uptick in retail sales last month, driven by clothing, a bleak winter lies ahead and consumers are looking at how they can tackle the fallout from the cost-of-living crisis in their spending decisions. There’s still little sign of early Christmas cheer for retailers.

A conference on technical textiles was held in New Delhi, November 16, 2022.

Companies exhibited a wide range of protective textile products. Panel discussions in the conclave covered the prospect of indigenisation of protective textile products in India, experience and expectations of consumers towards adoption of Indian protective textiles and market promotion and export opportunities of protective textiles in India along with global best practices.The technical textile industry is a sunrise industry with a robust growth rate of ten per cent annually. However, the sector is still small in size and there is a lot of opportunity for India to be a prominent player in the global arena.

So the need of the hour is to focus on product diversification, design, aesthetics as well as the need for training the manpower involved. Efforts are being made to develop and implement standards for technical textile items and produce and market quality products that are at par with international standards. The National Technical Textiles Mission has undertaken initiatives such as supporting R&D projects in niche and strategic protech areas. Guidelines will be formulated to support and create an education ecosystem and skilled workforce in the field of technical textiles with the development of new courses and laboratory infrastructure in technical textilesto promote the growth of technical textiles in India.

The International Apparel Federation (IAF) is aiming at a fairer distribution of risk and reward between buyers and producers.

IAF is a global network uniting small and medium manufacurers, brands, manufacturers and their associations. When western brands collapsed during the Covid pandemic, one of the first things they did was to cancel already completed orders.As buyers cancelled orders, suppliers were left in a lurch. They had to sink or swim. The IAFhas identified the need to urgently rebuild trust and has begun emphasising on supply chain issues guided by the urgency of the need for industry transition in a changed world. IAF believes the supply chain, to function well, literally and figuratively speaking, needs a new contract and needs to operate with a greater sense of equity.

So IAF has teamed up with the Star Network of industry associations, GIZ, Better Buying and the OECD in a project in which around ten associations will build their recommendations for payment and delivery terms. Even though intentions are often good, purchasing practices are more an offer by buyers. The financial flows fuelling the supply chain including a fairer distribution of risk and reward are a major part of this new contract and IAF is developing both guidance and concrete services to its members in this area. Another way IAF is preparing for the new world is by adapting to the policies and core values which will gain significance but will come at a steep cost. IAF feels that as the essence to the greening of the industry is a supply-chain-wide collaborative approach, pledges to reduce CO2 emissions are important but not sufficient and that costs and the rewards of transformation need to be shared in the supply chain.

So the financial sector can bridge gaps, education across the supply chain will help and consumers can drive change though they need to be able to base their buying decisions on clear and trustworthy green claims. The organisation notes circularity – the practice of encouraging reuse, recycling, or sustainability in consumption, manufacturing – as the most effective method to reduce the pressure on climate exerted by the apparel industry.At the same time, IAF will focus on bringing the manufacturers' voice more clearly into the global industry infrastructure that is being built to reduce apparel's global environmental footprint.

Other priorities

The IAF's other priorities are working on institutional infrastructure, education and training, digitisation and transparency. It believes the apparel industry needs a better global, institutional industry infrastructure, promoting more inclusivity and that this can be done by reducing audit and standard fatigue.IAF and the International Textile Manufacturers Federation have taken up a project to do this.In line with its aim to build a stronger global institutional infrastructure for the industry, IAF will also work to enhance global coordination of industry education.

Global coordination implies alignment of priorities, quality and efforts to reduce the chances of overlap. IAF is working with several multilateral organisations to organise a more structured transfer of knowledge aimed particularly at industry associations.The IAF will also stress on all-out, all-forces-joined drive for digitization and has emphasised on the need to accelerate efforts to increase transparency of its supply chains since transparency is important to create more responsive supply chains, to improve sustainability and is needed to comply with demands of civil society and government.

IAF's mission is to unite all stakeholders of the fashion and apparel industry, including brands, retailers, manufacturers, suppliers and country associations from around the world to enable and promote smarter, stronger, more sustainable supply chains.Buyers’ conduct at the start of the pandemic often was the exact opposite of collaboration and the breach of trust created caused damage to supply chains that needs to be repaired. IAF has formulated a strategy for strengthening supply chains that will help repair this damage, prevent new damage and contribute to the creation of a stronger, smarter and more sustainable industry.

Colombo Fashion Week’s Luxury Edition opened November 17, 2022

The effort is to showcase Sri Lanka’s talented fashion designers and the event featured luxury, occasion, and bridal trousseau segments by eight designers who had created their collections.The latest edition has emphasised on looking for resources available in Sri Lanka to create garments by changing the narrative and manufacturing materials available in the crisis-hit island nation.Sri Lanka’s fashion industry is facing a lack of young professionals since 2019 as many aspiring individuals are moving away due to the challenges faced by them following the Easter Sunday attack, the pandemic, and an unprecedented economic crisis. The industry has been in the process to improve globally lucrative ventures in the last decade, but the challenges have reversed the gains. A lot of young designers are going into big apparel companies. Sri Lanka was predominantly influenced by apparel manufacturing and so Colombo Fashion Week wants to rediscipline the whole cycle, inspire youngsters to take to fashion and take to design and give them the curriculum and the work to give them the right mindset.Economic crisis has hit the imports of fashion designing materials with only a few materials available within Sri Lanka like accessories and fabrics. Imports of nearly 50 percent of the designing materials have been banned as the country’s central bank wants to save dollars in the face of an acute foreign exchange shortage.

The global crisis as a result of the impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war is being felt by the textile industry in Indonesia.

Indonesia’s textile exports have dropped dramatically after the Russia-Ukraine war. The loss of this export market has made textile companies in Indonesia overstock.

On the other hand, the domestic market is not available since it is flooded with imported products. So this condition causes domestic textile products to go nowhere and the impact of which has been that textile companies in Indonesia are experience overstock.

This has also caused textile companies to take policies to lay off their employees. In just 16 days, more than 85,000 employees throughout Indonesia have been laid off. It is difficult to predict when the textile industry in Indonesia will recover from the current crisis caused by the war. The recession can be said to have begun. If domestic demand revives the export market that is currently missing can be replaced and textile companies in the country can survive. The industry feels that suppression of imports, especially the flood of illegal imports of used clothes, can help textile enterprises to revive.

In the third quarter of 2022, Indonesia’s textile industry grew by eight per cent year on year.