FW
Investors from Taiwan have shown an interest in investing $2.5 billion dollars in Indonesia’s petrochemical industry to manufacture ammonia and mega methanol. Ammonia and mega methanol can produce many derivative products, such as consumer textiles, industrial textiles, engineering plastic, resin, rubber and acrylic fiber.
Investors are expecting to build two factories, each on an area covering 100 hectares of land, in two phases. In the first phase, 6,00,000 tons of ammonia would be produced per year and 1.8 million tons of mega-methanol in the second phase.
The Taiwanese investors are yet to finalise a suitable location for their projects, taking into account the availability of natural gas as the raw material for petrochemical plants. The proposed investment is expected to help meet this year's investment realisation target, which is $45.2 billion, while the target for foreign investment realisation has been set at $29.3 billion, which is 65 per cent of the total investment target.
The Indonesian petrochemical industry has been encountering a rapid rise in its dependency on imported polymers. Indonesia is becoming increasingly attractive as an investment destination for petrochemical producers, particularly from Taiwan and Japan. There are huge opportunities for investment due to the high and growing domestic demand.
Chic will be held in China, March 16 to 18, 2016. It will occupy one lakh sq. mt. area and host about 1,200 exhibitors. Among these will be 700 Chinese exhibitors and 30 French exhibitors. The two other major pavilions will be those representing Germany and Turkey. Italian exhibitors will celebrate the second edition of La Moda Italiana, grouping together footwear and apparel. There will be segments on footwear and accessories, men's fashion, women's fashion, designers, fur and leather, children’s wear, casual wear and denim.
Among participating brands are Bleu Forêt, Derhy, Giorgio & Mario, Paul & Joe, Redskins, etc. Chic is not only a garment exhibition but bearing more functions to satisfy the demands of enterprises: channel extension, resource integration, market quotation checking, cross - border cooperation and exploration, international communication, trend release, capital connection.
The show aims at optimising the resources of department stores and shopping centers; mining e-business platforms, buyers and multi-brand stores. The March 2015 edition saw 1,25,000 visitors, of whom 44 per cent were agents and potential franchisees, and nearly 15 per cent were buyers from department stores and shopping malls. Independent multi-brand stores only accounted for one per cent of visitors.
Khadi production in India is expected to reach Rs 1,300 crores during this fiscal year, generating employment for more 19.50 lakh people. To promote the interest of rural artisans, development of 39 clusters will be taken up with an approximate cost of Rs 60 crores benefiting more than 10,000 artisans.
A sum of Rs 100 crores has been earmarked under the Scheme for Promotion of Innovation in Rural Industries and Entrepreneurship. A web based application and monitoring system will be designed and implemented. Village industries production is expected to cross Rs 45,000 crores during 2016-17, creating employment for more than 163 lakh people.
A sum of Rs 44 crores has been allotted to take coir products to the level of 5.5 lakh metric tons and create employment for more than 7.25 lakh people and exports of more than Rs 1,500 crores. A sum of Rs1,139 crores will be utilised during 2016-17 to assist 55,000 projects. This will generate employment for more than 4,25,000 people.
Khadi is produced mostly by micro and small enterprises in the country. Lack of marketing orientation and technological obsolescence are the major obstacles that prevent khadi from playing a larger role in the Indian textile arena.
Bangladesh’s exports are expected to reach $60 billion by 2021 coinciding with the country's 50th independence anniversary. Contributory factors are a dynamic private sector, strong economic foundation and fundamentals and the country’s strategic location.
Current annual exports now stand at over $31 billion and are now increasing at 12.5 per cent a year. The country wants to transform from a labor-reliant economy to a digital one. Sectors in the van are garments, medicine, leather, ship building and information technology.
Employment opportunities will be created for a million youths in the IT sector. It’s estimated, the country will need a few hundred thousand programmers in the next five years. Bangladesh hopes to become a mid-income country by 2021. The targeted growth rate for the current fiscal is seven per cent.
Meanwhile a month-long trade fair is on in Bangladesh. It covers an area of four lakh sq ft. Some of the leading industrial enterprises of Bangladesh and China, Thailand, Iran, and India are taking part in the fair. A number of high profile trade and investment delegations from these countries are visiting the fair to explore trade and investment prospects. India is participating for the fifth time.
"Apparel was the third-highest industry for reshoring in the US in 2014 says A T Kearney’s Reshoring Index, accounting for 12 per cent of cases of reshoring. According to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, from 2013 to 2014 (the latest year for which data is available), the US apparel industry’s output went up by 4 per cent, making it the country’s second-fastest growing manufacturing sector."
When apparel manufacturing jobs were flying off-shore in the 1990s, many brands divested in its clothing factory. However, over the last five years many of them expanded their workers at domestic facility they owned, before moving the operation into a larger facility to meet demand. In 1990, the US apparel sector employed 939,000 people. In the UK during 1970s and 1980s, whole towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire were fuelled by textile mills, providing up to 10,000 jobs per factory, and the industry employed between 750,000 and one million people in manufacturing.
The last three decades have brought these industries to their knees. Jobs flew overseas and factories closed, while clothing labels began to read ‘Made in China’ and, later, ‘Bangladesh’ or ‘Vietnam.’ Today, over 90 per cent of US apparel is imported and US apparel manufacturing employs about 135,000 people, according to the Alliance for American Manufacturing. In the UK, the Fashion & Textiles Association (UKFT) puts the figure at about 100,000 people.
However, some brands are bucking this trend. Last month, Burberry announced plans to invest over £50 million to expand its production in the North of England. Last year, Nike promised to create up to 10,000 new jobs in manufacturing and engineering in the US if the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement, is enacted. And new apparel labels like Zady, Reformation and Nasty Gal are making some - or all - of their products in the US
Is reshoring, that too when jobs that were offshored, or sourced from overseas, are brought back to the US and UK a reality? The data paints a complicated picture.
Apparel was the third-highest industry for reshoring in the US in 2014 says A T Kearney’s Reshoring Index, accounting for 12 per cent of cases of reshoring. According to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, from 2013 to 2014 (the latest year for which data is available), the US apparel industry’s output went up by 4 per cent, making it the country’s second-fastest growing manufacturing sector.
In 2014, there were only about 300 reshoring cases in US manufacturing industry, says AT Kearney. In 2015, that plummeted to fewer than 60. What’s more, the Index also shows that every year from 2011 to 2015, reshoring of US manufacturing failed to keep up with offshoring.
Sourcing Vs manufacturing
Currently, proponents of reshoring argue companies’ sourcing decisions are more nuanced. They say that factors like rising labour costs in China and fashion companies’ increasing need for speed to market - as well as issues with overseas suppliers like industrial unrest and problems with product quality - are making US and UK manufacturing more attractive.
On the other hand, some argue cost is still king. Countries like Mexico, Haiti or Peru can match US manufacturing on speed to market, for a fraction of the cost. The consensus seems to be that the US and UK won’t see apparel manufacturing growing to anywhere near the levels they enjoyed three decades ago.
Building agile supply chain
Keeping manufacturing close to stores also allows a fashion business to build an agile supply chain. Brooks Brothers, which calls itself America’s ‘oldest clothing retailer,’ has three US factories, which make 45 to 50 per cent of the company’s clothing, 10 per cent of its shirts, and 100 per cent of its ties. When apparel manufacturing jobs were flying offshore in the 1990s, Brooks Brothers, like many brands, divested in its clothing factory. However, over the last five years, it expanded its US staff, before moving the operation into a larger facility to meet demand.
Recently, Burberry waved the Union Jack with an announcement that it would invest over £50 million to develop a new manufacturing and weaving facility in Leeds. The facility will employ over 1,000 people, absorbing the whole staff from its existing two facilities in Yorkshire. However, Burberry declined to comment on what percentage of its manufacturing is done in the UK.
Incidentally, a 2013 Gallup poll found 45 per cent of Americans said they had made a special effort to buy US-made products - though this sentiment does not necessarily extend to all sectors of the market. While high-street brands like Asos source some products in the UK, due to the low efficiency of factories and the small volumes they work with, the current situation in British apparel manufacturing as it’s not for everyone.
The second edition of Avantex Paris, held recently at Paris Le Bourget, not only unveiled new exhibitors but it also consolidated the contacts made last September.
According to Michael Scherpe, the CEO of Messe Frankfurt France, he wanted this second event in February and Avantex Paris will always be held twice a year. At present, the fashion world operates to a rhythm of two main collections annually. We represent the place where two worlds - fashion and technology, which are not necessarily in step with each other - meet. We must keep to the pattern of twice a year, because we organise fashion trade fairs, so fashion must prevail, he explained.
Avantex Paris, now held for the second time, is a new trade fair dedicated to high-tech fashion fabrics and to R&D in the sector. It has been well received as the catalyst for developing the fashion industry in its widest sense towards more technological, better-connected, multi-functional horizons etc., which are being prized more and more by designers and the major fashion labels.
The event formed a meeting point for specialists in functional fabrics and state-of-the-art technology mainly from Taiwan, China, Thailand and Korea, including the ENSAIT/GEMTEX laboratory (France) and the French federation La Fashiontech, whose members are players in innovative, sustainable fashion.
The Ethisphere Institute honors companies that excel in three areas: promoting ethical business standards and practices internally, enabling managers and employees to make good choices, and shaping future industry standards by introducing tomorrow’s best practices. And for the sixth time, H&M has been recognised by the Ethisphere Institute as one of the world’s most ethical companies.
Ethisphere has developed a framework over years of research to provide a means to assess an organisation’s performance in an objective, consistent and standardised way. The information collected provides a comprehensive sampling of definitive criteria of core competencies rather than all aspects of corporate governance, risk, sustainability, compliance and ethics.
Scores are generated in five key categories: ethics and compliance program (35 per cent), corporate citizenship and responsibility (20 per cent), culture of ethics (20 per cent), governance (15 per cent) and leadership, innovation and reputation (10 per cent) and provided to all companies who participate in the process.
Ethisphere is the global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices that fuel corporate character, marketplace trust and business success. Companies honored have historically out-performed others financially, demonstrating the connection between good ethical practices and performance that’s valued in the marketplace.
ethisphere.com/
Everest Textile, a company in Taiwan, has championed intelligent automation since 2014. It is the first smart textile firm in Asia employing big data, cloud computing and smart networking technology to re-engineer operations. This upgrade is expected to raise Everest’s production efficiency by 30 per cent while eliminating 30 per cent of manual labor processes by year-end. Everest expects to fully recover its capital outlay in 18 months.
In addition to quantifiable benefits, the company is turning out a new breed of employees adept in the latest automation technologies. This is opposed to traditional textile mills using foreign workers for routine tasks such as operating equipment and maintenance.
These advantages will ensure Everest remains at the head of the pack in the functional fabric sector and differentiate itself from competitors, especially those from mainland China. Responsible environmental practices are another important plank in Everest’s business model. The company has adopted energy saving measures and converted manufacturing facilities into green buildings. Its annual energy consumption has dropped 27 per cent.
Everest remains confident it can continue to enjoy global competitiveness on the strength of superior business know-how and product quality. It is committed to working with its clients for the best solutions. Such a farsighted business approach makes it stand head and shoulders above the rest.
www.everest.com.tw/
With a view to enhancing the country’s exports, Pakistan will give the value-added textile sector top priority. Pakistan is also considering restoring the tax-free facility for five zero-rated sectors, including textiles, from the next fiscal year. In terms of quantity, exports of some textile products from Pakistan have increased. However, in value terms, these have showed negative growth due to the declining price trend globally.
Power tariffs have been cut to support the textile industry and further benefits are likely. Exporters have been urged to produce high value-added products for better growth of the country’s textile exports. In Pakistan’s textile sector, readymade garments are the only products whose exports are growing.
The country's cotton production declined last year due to climate changes. With steps now being taken toward enhancing cotton production, some positive results are expected in future. Efforts are being made to clear refund claims of the textile sector. Meanwhile Textile Asia is being held in Pakistan, March 9 to 11, 2016. This is meant to promote value-added machinery in the textile sector. Some 550 delegates from 27 countries are participating.
The exhibition brings textile and garment machinery, accessories, raw material supplies, chemicals and allied services under one roof.
Ahilan Anantha Krishnan from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and Himel Barua, a student at the University of Akron along with his team mates - two people of Indian origin - are among top three individual and team winners of the NASA Space Suit Textile Testing Challenge that aims at creating new concepts for protective suits for future exploration missions.
Recently, NASA announced the winners of two competitions: Space Suit Textile Testing Challenge, in which the two Indians won; and In-Situ Materials Challenges - aimed at creating new concepts for construction and human habitation on future space exploration missions, including the agency’s journey to Mars. Both Indians won prizes in the Space Suit Textile Testing category which offered three prizes of $5,000 each for winning ideas on how to test the outer protective layer of spacesuit material for performance in different kinds of planetary environments, such as like Mars or large asteroids.
While, Krishnan won the prize for his for his proposal on evaluating space suit textile abrasion in planetary environments, Barua and his team mates got the prize for their proposal of a cylindrical abrasion method. These two challenges, managed for NASA by global innovation firm NineSigma, launched in October 2015 under the umbrella of the NASA Tournament Lab, yielded innovative concepts for spacesuit testing and in-situ building materials use for habitat construction.
