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Bangladesh’s garment and apparel exports in the fiscal year 2015-16 were up 10.21 per cent over the previous year. Growth was mainly attributed to political calmness during the year, increased productivity, entrepreneurs’ resilience and improvement of workers’ safety standards in factories.
The country is the world’s second largest readymade garment exporter with advantages like a low labor cost, favorable business climate, and well-established transport facility. The readymade garment sector is the country’s largest source for export earnings. Readymade garments exported from Bangladesh represent around six per cent of the global clothing market.
Fashion brands like Zara, H&M, Gap and Levi’s are already manufacturing and importing clothes from Bangladesh. The industry employs around four million citizens and is one industry where women are in high numbers, almost 90 per cent of the workforce.
Efforts are being made to further boost and promote the country’s readymade garment sector by facilitating a healthier business environment, training more skilled workers, improving social compliance status and improving coordination among the manufacturers, exporters and importers. Bangladesh exports around $30 billion of readymade garments a year. The vision is to achieve $50 billion of readymade garment exports by 2021.
The Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO), a government-based firm, will host its first Japan Textile Salon on January 17 and 18, in New York City. The event will take place at The Altman Building. An exclusive selection of 22 textile exhibitors was chosen to showcase design techniques and the use of various fabrication and materials. The aim of the show is to increase sales and distribution channels within the US market for each exhibitor, states JETRO.
The Textile Salon will introduce Japanese colour trends for the upcoming spring 2019 season with a focus two themes: Moon Night Diver, a compilation of blues purples and greens that “depict the interplay of light and show;” and Biotech Lab, a “nature-inspired” palette comprised of botanical greens and blue-greens. Notable fabrics on display include organic cotton, Coolmax, premium fabrics made by a special circular loom that employs a traditional silk braiding technology and water-repellent stretch fabrics. Technologies that will be on display include inkjet printing techniques and traditional Japanese hand-printing methods.
Asuka Yatabe, Project Coordinator for JETRO says the exhibitors selected are among the top weavers, design studios and manufacturers as this show is extremely focused. He noted that the companies selected for the salon are “highly compatible” with the global market. Each exhibitor was selected because of his or her contribution to the show’s “uniqueness” regarding novelty in textures, fabric innovation or use of natural materials; craftsmanship in printing techniques or technology; functionality, or utilitarian fabrics, ecology and for the use of sustainable materials.
India is the second largest footwear producer in the world. The country’s footwear production accounts for nine per cent of the global annual production. China has a 60 per cent share in global production.
Footwear exports from India grew at a CAGR of 20 per cent in rupee terms during the last five years. Of the annual production of shoes, 90 per cent is consumed domestically while the remaining is exported to Europe, primarily United Kingdom, Germany, US, Italy and France.
Growth of Indian fashion and lifestyle sector has given an impetus to the footwear industry. From a basic need-based industry, it has now evolved to fashion and style category. The footwear market equally divided between the organised and unorganised players. Organised players cater to about a third of the market. The unorganised segment gained prominence in the Indian context due to its price-competitive products, which are more suitable and attractive to the price-conscious Indian consumer.
With increased household income, shifting consumer behavior from saving to spending, growing brand consciousness, influx of a large number of global brands and penetration into Tier II and III cities by footwear companies, the organised retail footwear market is rapidly evolving and is expected to grow at a higher rate in future.
China International Nonwovens Expo (CINE) will be held from June 21 to 23, 2017. This biennial event was first held in October 2015. The expo last year featured over 80 exhibitors, with nonwovens products for the medical, filtration, building and other industries on display.
The forum, which included two days of seminars and product presentations from overseas and Chinese companies, allowed producers, end-users, academics, industry associations and other stakeholders to have in-depth exchanges on the current market trends, national industry standards and policies, and new product developments, as well as seek out new business opportunities in the Chinese market.
It is ideally suited for companies in the fields of nonwovens and nonwoven products, machinery and ancillaries for nonwovens, raw materials and chemicals for nonwovens, and nonwovens industry related services.
China is the world’s largest producer, exporter and consumer for nonwoven fabrics, and over the past decade, growth in these three areas has been rapid. Between 2011-15, nonwovens output grew on an average annual growth rate of 11.7 per cent, with the country now contributing 40 per cent of global output. During this same period, sales of nonwovens in China grew 21.6 per cent, while exports increased 13.9 per cent. China has been making concerted efforts to reduce industrial pollution in the country, leading to a surge in demand for filtration nonwovens.
Next posted a 3.8 per cent drop in pre-tax profits for the year to the end of January. Next is anticipating another fall in profits. UK’s biggest clothing retailer has been battling a combination of economic, cyclical and internal factors. Next has raised shop prices by four per cent to offset the higher import costs from a weaker pound.
Total sales at the retailer’s 538 shops have fallen by 0.3 per cent, hit by a 4.6 per cent slump in full-price shop sales. The group’s Directory business, long seen as the engine driving its growth, also suffered a lackluster year with its own-brand sales down by 1.8 per cent. However, this was offset by its growing business selling other brands, which lifted its Label sales by 18.9 per cent and boosted total Directory sales by 4.2 per cent.
Next attributed some of its weakness to a reshuffle of its buying operations, which means it can respond to fashion trends faster, but at the expense of omitting some of its best-selling, heartland products from the range. The retailer also bore an increase in costs. Next expects a further increase in costs this year as it absorbs wage rises, the apprenticeship levy, and energy taxes.
Ethiopia is attracting foreign investors. And what’s attracting them is the prevalence of peace, smooth business transaction, a conducive custom and tax system. In addition development of infrastructure such as roads railway and energy is playing a crucial role in encouraging investment flow. Among the investors are, Chinese, Indian and Turkish industries taking the lion's share. Investments from these nations are gaining momentum.
For more than a couple of decades, Ethiopia has been registering high economic growth. As the second most populous country in Africa, Ethiopia provides investors the necessary facilities like labor, land and infrastructure. Industrial parks have been built with customs and banking services, electricity, energy and water services and sewage systems. The availability of air transport, cheap labor and tax holidays provided to investors have made the country attractive for foreign investment.
As a result, job opportunities are being created for hundreds of thousands of people. As a developing country, Ethiopia exports agricultural products and imports capital goods for its industrialization process. The nation needs foreign currency to meet its development ambitions and for that mobilising hard currency from various sources is being done.
Textile mills in South India are importing cotton from West Africa and the US. One reason is domestic and imported cotton prices are more or less at the same levels. But imported cotton appears to be attractive due to better yarn realisation, productivity and quality. Cotton imports may touch 30 lakh bales at the end of the 2016-17 season.
Incidentally, mills had imported cotton from West Africa last year too after the sharp increase in prices in the domestic market. Textile mills s in the country consume around 25 lakh bales of cotton a month. Mills in the South alone use about 10 lakh bales a month.
Cotton production in India for 2016-17 season is pegged at around 345 lakh bales. Cotton arrival as on March 20 was around 250 lakh bales compared to 260 lakh bales during the same period last year. Cotton prices have jumped 15.8 per cent since November. However a bumper cotton crop in Australia and the US would help in keeping prices under check. There has been a significant increase in cotton crop size in Australia and a 18 per cent increase in crop in the US. Since China has restricted its imports, the global cotton position is very comfortable.
Lenzing is expanding production capacities of Tencel fibers. New types of Tencel premium fibers such as the Refibra fiber are made using cotton scraps from the manufacturing of cotton garments and wood as raw materials. This fiber contributes to the circular economy.
Lenzing is an Austria-based manufacturer of textile and nonwovens cellulose fibers such as modal and lyocell. This investment will increase the annual production capacities for fibers by about 25,000 tons. Lenzing put its first industrial-scale lyocell fiber production facility into operation 20 years ago. Today the fibers are sold under the Tencel brand name.
Tencel fibers are being produced in Austria, US and UK. The lyocell technology is characterised by a good environmental performance. Cellulose fibers are derived from the renewable raw material wood in a closed-loop process, resulting in a minimal amount of environmentally harmful emissions.
Due to their outstanding properties, Tencel fibers boast a particularly broad range of applications, both in the world of fashion, as well as technical areas and nonwovens. Lenzing’s aims is to earn 50 per cent of its revenue from specialty fibers by 2020. The company has a focus on profitable growth based on environmentally friendly specialty fibers. The company produces 9,65,000 tons of fiber for the global textile and nonwoven markets.
Korea’s Samil Spinning has acquired US compamy Buhler Quality Yarns. As the US takes aggressive moves under its protectionist policies there has been a growing need to secure a production facility in the country. This led Samil to acquire an American company.
The American withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership was a major contributor to the acquisition. Samil was originally considering Vietnam or the US as possible options to set up its overseas production base. The deal allows the Korean midsize company to directly enter American markets without being held back by tariff barriers.
The US has been enforcing a protective rule of origin in the textile industry, dubbed the yarn forward rule, which means only apparel using US-produced yarn textiles can be sold in the market free of a 32 per cent duty. The acquisition grants Samil Spinning a US-based facility, thus freeing the company from high tariffs. Buhler Quality Yarns is an American subsidiary of Switzerland’s 205-year-old yarn maker Hermann Buhler.
Samil Spinning can also make use of the free trade agreement between the Dominican Republic and Central America to expand its customer base as apparel produced in member countries using US-made yarn is treated equally as US-produced apparel products.
Inditex registered a net profit jump of 10 per cent last year. And the momentum has continued this year, with 13 per cent growth in store and online sales in constant currency terms over the past six weeks. Sales at Inditex stores rose eight per cent in the first six weeks of this fiscal year.
Inditex is the world’s largest fashion retailer by sales and seeks to have full integration of the brick-and-mortar stores and online businesses. Among the brands run by Inditex are Pull & Bear, Bershka, and Zara. For all of 2016, Inditex reported a rise in sales at all of its eight brands. Zara alone was responsible for 66 per cent of total sales.
Inditex plans to open between 450 and 500 new stores in 2017 while absorbing 150 to 200 smaller ones. In 2016, it opened a net 279 stores, bringing its total to nearly 7,300. This new strategy leaves plenty of space for the online platform to expand without cannibalizing the brick-and-mortar shops. By closing smaller stores and focusing on flagship stores, customers who aren’t close to these stores could be prodded into shopping online.
Inditex is trying to integrate the two services. For instance, customers can pick up and return online store-bought purchases. They can also order online with the help of a store clerk.
