FW
The power loom sector in India makes up 80 per cent of woven fabric production, 60 per cent of total fabric production and provides direct jobs to 63 lakh people especially people below the poverty line, rural masses and women. Power loom sector meets the clothing needs of entire population in the country apart from fetching sizable forex earnings. Hence, competitiveness across the value chain depends on the performance of the power loom sector.
In the last seven years, the power loom sector has been facing numerous challenges due to sluggish global and domestic market conditions. Though capacity has increased by 12 per cent in the last seven years, fabric production went up only 2.4 per cent. High production costs, labor shortages, transport costs, five state VAT, mass closure of dyeing units, exorbitant cost of machines and manmade fibers, hank yarn obligations are some of the major challenges.
Also the GST Plus agreement signed by Pakistan and EU in 2013-14 has had a huge impact on India’s power loom fabric exports with 9.6 per cent duty advantage given to Pakistan. Meanwhile, subsidy schemes have been devised for the sector including TUFS and subsidy for conversion of non-automatic looms, semi-automatic looms.
The Italian apparel industry has a well-established reputation for premium fashion products. The apparel and the textile industry, in Italy plays an important role in the country’s GDP and export earnings. The sector employs over 4, 10,000 workers in just over 50,000 apparel companies spread across the country. More than half of its sales in 2015 were generated from international markets.
As one of the top 10 export categories in Italy, apparel made up nearly four per cent of the total annual exports. The US, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Turkey, and Russia are some of the largest exporting destinations for Italian apparel products. Women’s wear is the largest segment in the apparel industry and growing by 2.3 per cent year on year. In comparison, men’s wear is increasing at 0.9 per cent.
The country plans to promote its fashion and apparel industry as well as fashion exports globally. Their plans include funding trade shows and multichannel marketing and distribution, expanding Made in Italy brands into more department stores and e-commerce platforms around the world. The total value of Italy’s apparel market was estimated at $36.6 billion in 2016 and is expected to reach $42 billion by 2020.
Madura Coats, in collaboration with Permess, has opened a studio in Bangalore to meet the sampling requirements of customers and help them quickly launch new products and designs. The studio will provide a range of garmenting solutions rather than just trim components. It is equipped with state-of-the-art technology and equipment with in-house sewing, fusing, washing and testing facilities to provide all the required technical and back-end support for garment manufacturers and brands.
Madura Coats is part of Coats, the world’s leading industrial thread manufacturer. Permess, based in the Netherlands, makes dot coated woven, knitted and nonwoven fusible fabrics for garment interlining applications from cotton, viscose to polyester. Coats will be able to provide samples and technical support within the demanding lead time requirements of the industry. An in-house Embroidery Service Center provides embroidery solutions to brands and manufacturers.
The studio will enhance Permess’ ability to demonstrate the suitability of specific interlinings to different garment applications and also help customers choose the specific feel and handles their needs. Madura Coats and Permess had earlier partnered in 2016 to jointly promote, sell and distribute interlining products for the Indian market and deliver the full range of superior woven, non-woven and tricot interlinings catering to both exporters and premium domestic manufacturers.
Designers are experimenting with color changing clothing. Researchers and designers around the world are developing techniques and technology with exciting possibilities. Color-changing textiles are still in their infancy but knowledge around them is beginning to spread. However, thermochromic inks have been used for decades, from novelty items such as mood rings, to packaging that indicates when food or drink is at the right temperature, to more utilitarian applications such as thermometers and battery indicators.
One such technology is Ebb that uses color-changing threads that respond to electrical charges. The threads are conductive and coated in thermo chromic pigments. Developers are weaving and crocheting these threads to create different designs and effects. While the color change is currently slow, they hope to eventually make it as fast as e-ink, which would open up many possible applications.
Working with leuco dye-based thermo chromic inks, researchers have developed methods to allow colorful patterns to appear on solid-colored fabrics in response to environmental temperature changes. Leuco dyes are colored when below their activation temperature and clear or very light above that temperature. They are usually blended with other pigments, which allows them to change from one color to another. Researchers have experimented with different blends to create inks that look similar to each other when below the temperature threshold, but reveal multiple hues when warmed. They have also created designs with inks that activate at different temperatures, creating textiles that change multiple times as the temperature rises.
Belarus-based company Mogilevkhimvolokno, the largest producer of polyester fibers and yarns in Europe, is building a new industrial cluster. The new cluster will operate on a full cycle basis, from processing of raw materials to manufacturing finished products. During the first stage of the project the new cluster will focus on production and processing of technical yarns. The second stage involves production of a wide range of products mostly intended for export, including tent cloth, rubber technical goods, and others.
Among the products to be produced are fire hoses, preforms, special clothes, and chemical coatings. The new cluster will also house new R&D facilities that will focus on the design of new products. The cluster is expected to contribute to the rise of profitability of the entire Belarussian technical textile industry.
Belarus aims to be a technical textile production hub in Europe. It hopes to increase exports of finished products to the EU and in particular to Germany, where the demand for nonwovens and technical textiles has significantly increased in recent years. In addition to the EU, part of the production of the new cluster will be exported to North American region.
"Pakistan’s Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) recently approved a Rs 12 million grant to facilitate the wind-up process of Pakistan Textile City, which was inaugurated in 2011 at Port Qasim Karachi. This textile city never produced a single meter of cloth. On the other side, the Xinjiang Textile Park was inaugurated in the border province of China-Pakistan. Xinjiang now grows 60 per cent of Chinese cotton."
Pakistan’s Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) recently approved a Rs 12 million grant to facilitate the wind-up process of Pakistan Textile City, which was inaugurated in 2011 at Port Qasim Karachi. This textile city never produced a single meter of cloth. On the other side, the Xinjiang Textile Park was inaugurated in the border province of China-Pakistan. Xinjiang now grows 60 per cent of Chinese cotton.
Only in 2016, 22 new enterprises were opened in Aksu Textile Park in southern Xinjiang, producing 10 million metres of cotton cloth with 800,000 spindles every year. China plans to add another 100,000 new jobs in textile manufacturing in Xinjiang alone, which already saw 112,300 new workers hired in 2016. While the Pakistan Textile City intended to produce 80,000 new jobs, and in turn created only administrative jobs in the headquarters. Built with around Rs 1.2 billion in an area of 1,250 acres, around 774 industrial plots of various sizes were developed in Pakistan Textile City. To develop the area by constructing a 3 km road, water tanks, etc., a loan of Rs 2.5 billion was also taken from the National Bank of Pakistan. These two cities present a stark contrast in the way both countries look at textile as a sector.
Tough times for Karachi textiles sector
Looking at the plight of textiles in the city, Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) issued a statement saying, “The anticipated glut of textile and garment from the Xinjiang textile park in the export as well as domestic markets of Pakistan poses a serious threat to Pakistan’s textile sector already struggling to remain afloat. Setting up of the textile park at Xinjiang will give a heavy blow to Pakistani textile exports.”
In 2015, a presentation was made on how Lawrencepur Brand, Pakistan’s premier brand of clothing, was forced to move operations from Pakistan to China. Lawrencepur is now made in China. According to analysts, the city is losing business, market share and jobs. This shift has really happened because of the adoption of new technology, innovation and new industry, forcing old industry to shut down. In the present scenario, local companies in Pakistan are either closed down or taken over by the Chinese shareholders. In all these things, Chinese companies can’t be blamed because they are ruling by applying the principle of ‘survival of the fittest’.
What needs to be done?
If Pakistan textile entrepreneurs want to remain in business, they have to sharply redefine their business methods. There is a need for a clearly defined textile by the government for the upliftment of sector. Having said that, despite government support, Pakistan’s textile industry lags behind Malaysia’s MATRADE (similar to Pakistan’s Trade Development Authority), which is a great example of how its officers work tirelessly to gain global access.
The fashion industry in France is now 2.7 per cent of France’s GDP and accounts for up to a million jobs. Revenue from fashion industry is expected to register a CAGR of over 10 per cent from 2017 to 2021. In terms of sales, apparel make up the largest segment of the French fashion industry.
Women’s wear is the largest category in the sector, representing over half of the overall value sales of apparel in France in 2016, while men’s wear accounts for 32 per cent. However, both women’s and men’s wear posted low growth rates in 2016, with each increasing in current value by one per cent.
As for textile and apparel production, France ranks as the third largest in Europe, behind Italy and Germany. France accounts for over 12 per cent of total textile and apparel sales and ten per cent of the textile workforce in Europe.
In recent decades, France focused more on innovative and high value added textile products such as technical textiles, which now make up 15 per cent of the market. Linen is one of the most important fibers in this category, in which France now manufactures 70 per cent of European production.
Indian apparel makers want rupee to stabilize. The rupee has been rising in recent months, in stark contrast to the situation in other countries who compete with India garment exports. While other countries have started taking recourse to depreciating their currencies in the last one-and-a-half years, the rupee has appreciated.
The Chinese yuan depreciated by 13 per cent against the dollar in the last 12 to 18 months, Bangladesh’s taka by six per cent and Vietnam’s dong by seven per cent. The Indian rupee, however, has risen by about six per cent in the last three or five months.
The rupee rose against the dollar even as the dollar rose against most other currencies due to strong flows of foreign institutional investor money into India’s stock markets. Exporters are not able to book orders due to the over-valued rupee as apparel exports are highly price-sensitive.
The rupee was over-valued by 18 per cent in February 2017. Now it is almost 20 per cent. The second factor worrying apparel makers is rising cotton prices. The rising cotton prices and rupee appreciation will nullify the intended impact of the recent export stimulation packages and also weaken India’s position against its competitors.
The market for technical textiles in India is expected to grow at 12 per cent CAGR between 2015-16 and 2017-18. India is expected to play a key role in shaping the technical textiles market with consumers spending more on home textiles, sportswear products, and medical products.
Technical textiles provide new opportunities to Indian textile industry to have a long term sustainable future. Despite achieving a high growth rate, the per capita consumption of technical textiles in India is 1.7 per kg vis-a-vis 10 to 12 kg in developed countries.
Globally, technical textiles make up 29 per cent of the overall textile industry. In some western countries they have 50 per cent share. In India, the share is a meager 10 per cent. India can be positioned as a manufacturing hub for technical textiles. Demand for technical textiles is expected to stay steady from 2015 to 2020 due to a broadening application in end-use industries, such as automotive, construction, health care, and sports equipment.
Development and industrialisation are the main drivers for the demand for technical textile products in a country. In 2015, the global technical textile market was valued at around $153 billion. On the back of strong demand, the global technical textile market is estimated to reach $194 billion by 2020, with global consumption expected to surpass 40 million tons.
The total turnover of the German textile and fashion industry grew by 0.2 percent in 2016 compared to 2015 touching €32 billion counting the shoe and leather goods industry. The diverging developments of the various segments are once again striking. Sales of textiles rose 2.9 per cent, increasing considerably. As Ingeborg Neumann, President of the Confederation of the German Textile and Fashion Industry, explained the strongest segments are primarily non-woven fabrics and technical textiles for application in medical and structural engineering, automotive industry, and aeronautics. German enterprises are globally leading in this regard. Furthermore, smart textiles provide new markets for a long-term future. As per Gerd Oliver Seidensticker, President German- Fashion Association points out in 2016, the German fashion industry faced many challenges both domestically and abroad. But the good thing is the exports are doing well again. Big losses in strong markets like Russia were compensated elsewhere which led to a slight increase in exports by 1.4 per cent. As for the future, its important to keep an eye on structural changes in sales at trade level. The target is to provide customers with service- and customer-oriented shopping experiences by using the opportunities of e-commerce and stationary trade. Globally, German products enjoy strong demand. Textile and fashion exports rose 1.2 per cent. Next to strong and attractive German fashion brands, technical textiles are primarily responsible for the growth. The export volume settled at a record level of €26.6 billion in 2016.
