FW
Rishad Bathiudeen, Sri Lanka's Minister of Commerce and Industry has vowed to safeguard the country's apparel industry from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement which has the potential to result in trade diversion from Sri Lanka. The minister said, we need to be able to carefully address the new Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement. We in the government understand that TPP is a trade challenge in the future and are currently studying it.
Bathiudeen was addressing the launch of Ransalu Pranama Combo Card jointly by Joint Apparel Association Forum (JAAF) Sri Lanka, Channel 17, Mobitel and Commercial Bank at Cinnamon Grand, Colombo on May 9. The country's pioneering workforce smartcard was launched to honor its apparel workforce has matured to become the first ever dual swipe card in the country.
Further, the minister said the TPP is not a trade challenge only for Sri Lanka but it even affects trading systems of its own 12 member countries in the Asia-Pacific region including Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US and Vietnam. The minister said Sri Lanka however, can generally expect some major aspects that could change and advised the apparel manufacturers to safeguard their designs.
Monsanto Mahyco Biotech has challenged the new price control notification for genetically modified Bt cotton seeds. Prices of Bt cotton seeds under the new notification, issued on March 8, came into effect from April 1. Under the new notification, the maximum retail price of Bollgard II Bt cotton seeds has been fixed at Rs 800 per packet, including Rs 49 as royalty fee payable to technology providers, for the 2016-17 season.
Prior to the notification, the average prevailing MRP was Rs 1,100 per packet and the royalty fee was Rs 163 per packet. Meanwhile, in a civil suit between Monsanto and one of its former licencees, Nuziveedu Seeds, Monsanto told the court that the seed company has not complied with court orders to pay it royalty after selling the old stock manufactured prior to November 2015.
Monsanto made the submission after Nuziveedu told the court that since the new notification has come, it cannot be compelled to pay more from April 1 onwards. However, to this Monsanto replied that since the license with Nuziveedu had been terminated on November l5 last year ,and as the termination has not been challenged, it is no longer a licensee and thus the notification would not apply to it. The court fixed the matter for hearing on May 16.
www.monsanto.com/
China’s cotton reserve auctions are off to a rapid start, outpacing last year’s sales in the first week alone, a sign of a shortage of high-grade supplies in the world’s top textile market. Beijing sold 1,20,350 tons in the first week of sale that began May 3, 2016. The bales sold, mostly imported cotton, represented nearly the entirety put up for sale and almost double the total volume sold in 2015.
This indicates a serious shortage of high-grade cotton for China’s textile sector. In the past, reserve sales have met tepid demand, raising questions over the quality of the fiber that’s piling up in China’s warehouses following a stockpiling program that Beijing scrapped in 2014.
The country's inventories were estimated to have swollen to some 11 million tons during the program. The aggressive buying pace is likely to continue as China’s spinners remain short of cotton. The daily rate of about 30,000 tons auctioned is likely to continue to be upped and it appears this year's offer price was more acceptable to buyers.
For 2016-17 crop year China's imports are expected to be up slightly from this year’s 13-year low but only one-fifth of the record buying pace seen four years ago.
US sports brand Nike has set environmental and social targets as a part of its vision for a low-carbon, closed-loop future. The targets to be achieved by 2020 include having zero waste from contracted footwear manufacturing sent to landfill or incineration without energy recovery, sourcing 100 per cent of products from contract factories meeting the company's definition of sustainable, and achieving a 10 per cent reduction in the average product environmental footprint and an increased use of more sustainable materials overall.
Other sustainability targets include: increase in water efficiency by 18 per cent per unit in apparel material dyeing and finishing, and working with fewer, better contract factories. The brand’s use of environmentally preferred materials has increased overall.
Nike believes it is not enough to adapt to what the future may bring. It believes in creating the future it wants to see through sustainable innovation. The company’s teams are advancing ambitious new business models and partnerships that can scale unprecedented change across the business and the industry.
Nike has set a moon shot challenge to double its business with half the impact. It's a challenge it has set for itself, its collaborators and its partners as Nike moves toward a circular economy future. This is a bold ambition that's going to take much more than incremental efficiency – it's going to take innovation on a never seen before scale.
www.nike.com/
Textile processing units in Sircilla, Telengana, are facing a water shortage. Drought conditions caused by monsoon failure have depleted the groundwater table and dried-up most of the borewells in Sircilla and its surroundings. The water woes, in turn, have become a bane for many textile workers. Getting regular work has become a luxury since the units they are employed with have no dependable water source now. Workers engaged in units with a dried-up water source count on their luck to get work as the owners have reduced production considerably due to the water scarcity and other market-linked problems.
They get work only when the unit owners order for water tankers to run different sections of textile processing from fabric dying to starching, stentering (stretching), sizing, drying and others. It also depends on orders the units get. Or else the workers have to bide their time at home.
The crisis in the textile units coupled with water woes is affecting workers’ lives from children’s education to family’s health needs. Sircilla at one time had handloom, power loom and textile processing units whirring round-the-clock. There were over a 100 units a decade ago. Hardly 70 are functioning now and more than half are on the verge of closure.
Not too long ago, cashmere was considered a rare luxury— made from the finest wools from traditional mills in Europe. As cashmere became wildly popular, suppliers started increasing production which meant raising many more goats on fragile Mongolian grasslands. However, this led to desertification and an environmental disaster in these grasslands as the sharp hooves of the goats destroyed the topsoil.
Quality also suffered as cut-price cashmere products (this is essentially a contradiction in terms as cashmere was never meant to be cheap or cut-price) flooded the market. The cheap cashmere revolution started in 2005 when import quotas were relaxed and China started exporting huge volumes of it to the EU. The lower end of the market still tends to be dominated by fibers from Chinese goats.
A fter washing, the finest, softest hair is separated from the coarser, outer guard hair. This guard hair is not considered high enough quality for many top-end manufacturers, but it is this level of quality customers will buy as cut-price cashmere. Alpaca is fast emerging as an alternative to the overexploitation of environmentally fragile grasslands in Mongolia. Alpaca comes from the South American highlands and Andes in Bolivia, Argentina but mainly Peru.
Many brands including Gucci are now offering alpaca accessories and garments. Alpaca is as luxurious and light to the feel as cashmere but its environmental impact is far less as the alpacas do not destroy the topsoil where they graze.
"Every year, 80 billion garments are made globally generating 1.3 billion tons of fabric waste, says Mausmi Ambastha, Founder and COO, Threadsol. In her recent blog ‘You Waste 1.3 Billion Tonnes Of Fabric. What Are You Doing About It?’ Ambastha urges apparel manufacturers to look into the harmful impact on environment of the fabric wasted during manufacturing process and invest in greener technologies to make manufacturing environmentally sustainable. Indeed, environment issues are high on the agenda everywhere with air pollution, noise pollution, wastes from plastic, food and materials from our everyday lives being monitored."
Every year, 80 billion garments are made globally generating 1.3 billion tons of fabric waste, says Mausmi Ambastha, Founder and COO, Threadsol. In her recent blog ‘You Waste 1.3 Billion Tonnes Of Fabric. What Are You Doing About It?’ Ambastha urges apparel manufacturers to look into the harmful impact on environment of the fabric wasted during manufacturing process and invest in greener technologies to make manufacturing environmentally sustainable. Indeed, environment issues are high on the agenda everywhere with air pollution, noise pollution, wastes from plastic, food and materials from our everyday lives being monitored. But the fact is nearly 75 per cent of global fabric waste is discarded untreated and this waste either end up in landfills or is burnt thereby polluting water and land alike, she argues.
More fiber, more waste, more damage
Global supply of fibers has almost double in the last decade from 52.6 million tons to 100 million tons. More production means more waste, leading to a negative impact on the environment. Ambastha writes, textile wastes comprise 1.0 – 5.1 per cent of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) compositions in the world regions. Although textile and apparel manufacturing has largely shifted to developing countries, textile waste remains a big concern both in developed and developing countries. In the US this waste is 4.95 per cent , China 1.3 and in a small country like Bhutan it is as high as 4.7 per cent. The environmental issues during the operational phase of textile manufacturing include the following:
Hazardous materials
Chemicals like Benzene, Cyanide, and Sulphate are discharged as effluents in the manufacturing of textiles which pose a serious health hazard.
Waste water
She points out that the textile industry utilises various chemicals and large amount of water during the production process. “The water is mainly used for application of chemicals onto fibers and rinsing of the final products. The waste water produced during this process contains a large amount of dyes and chemicals containing traces of metals such as Cr, Cu and Zn which are capable of harming the environment and human health. The textile waste water can cause hemorrhage, ulceration of skin, nausea, skin irritation and dermatitis. The chemicals present in the water block the sunlight and increase the biological oxygen demand thereby inhibiting photosynthesis and re-oxygenation.”
Emissions to air
Some textile manufacturing operations result in significant air pollution. Finishing processes (e.g. coating and dyeing operations) are some of these. Other significant sources of air emissions include drying, printing, fabric preparation, and wastewater treatment residues. “Solvents may be emitted from coating / treatment finishing processes, drying ovens, and high-temperature drying and curing. Other potential emissions include formaldehyde, acids (especially acetic acid), and other volatile compounds, such as carriers and solvents, emitted during dyeing operations and from wastewater treatment operations. Solvent vapors may contain toxic compounds such as acetaldehyde, chlorofluorocarbons, dichlorobenzene, ethyl acetate, methylnaphthalene, chlorotoluene, among others.”
Energy consumption
Textile manufacturing also results using up of a lot of energy resources. Heat consumption is particularly significant in drying and curing operations and in activities involving wet treatments.
Solid and liquid wastes Then there are solid and liquid wastes that are left out these include trials, selvedge, trimmings, cuttings of fabrics, and yarns; spent dyes, pigments, and printing pastes; and sludge from process wastewater treatment containing mainly fibers and grease.
Steps to be taken
Ambastha says, the Americans generate nearly 13 million tons of textile waste every year, while British generate 1.12 million tons. And even though the British seem to generate less waste, one in five British are known to throw away a garment after one wear. Statistically this means $127 million of clothing in landfills every year. Also, 15 per cent of fabric for clothing ends up on the cutting floor. Then in China, millions of unused fabrics from mills are wasted every year just because the colour dyed on them was wrong. What’s more a single mill in China uses up 200 tons of water for each ton of fabric it dyes. And many rivers water run the colour of the season as effluent plants are missing. Ambastha there urges the industry to invest time and energy to be more aware of the wastage and the terrible environmental impact of manufacturing. ThreadSol too offers solutions like intelloBuy and intelloCut to reduce fabric wastage in factories by upto 10 per cent, thereby boosting profits by 50 per cent.
China's home-textiles export dropped remarkably by 18.1 per cent to $3.65 billion in this calendar year, says China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Textile and Apparel. The reason: weak demand and high year-on-year basis compared to the over 20-per cent growth in same period of last year.
Export to the United States, Europe and Japan all saw double-digit decline. In January-February, China's export to the above-mentioned three markets presented a downward trend. The export stood at $1.02 billion, $670 million and $330 million, down 14.9 per cent, 10.9 per cent and 10.5 per cent respectively from a year earlier.
China's export of home-textiles to ASEAN markets and Latin America dropped significantly by 30.6 per cent and 40.3 per cent in the same period. While Guangdong Province remained the big player, inland provinces/municipalities have poor performance. The top five exporters are Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Shanghai and Guangdong, but the exports from the first four declined, in which, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shanghai saw significant decline between 13 per cent and 22 per cent, while Shandong saw 4.8-per cent drop. Guangdong Province alone maintained steady growth despite unfavorable situation, but the growing pace slowed down to 9.4 per cent.
Exports from many inland provinces/municipalities such as Hebei, Anhui, Chongqing and Xinjiang saw over 20-per cent decline, Yunnan, Xichuan and Gansu even saw over 50-per cent decline.
The Bangladesh government has sought cooperation from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB) for the implementation of 5 per cent profit sharing with the Workers Welfare Fund as per Labour Act. The meeting with the ICAB leaders held at Labour and Employment Ministry also discussed ways ICAB could help the government in implementing the Labor Act, which has a provision of 5 per cent profit sharing to the welfare funds for ensuring workers’ rights.
According to Labour Act, each company will have to pay 5 per cent of the net profit of the previous year at the proportion of 80:10:10 respectively to the Participatory Fund, Welfare Fund and Workers Welfare Foundation Fund established under a section 14 of the Bangladesh Workers Welfare Foundation Act, 2006.
If the auditors could raise questions about the law while preparing the audit report, the owners of the company will have to contribute to the fund as per the rules.
Bangladesh, India and Pakistan are expecting higher exports of readymade garment (RMG) to the United States (US) and European Union (EU) as the exports from the East Asian giant China and start-ups Cambodia and Vietnam are the on decline. The textile and apparel (readymade garments) exports from China, Vietnam and Cambodia to the US declined by 43.3 per cent, 22.4 per cent and 22 per cent respectively in March compared with February, according to the US Department of Commerce’s Office of Textiles and Apparel.
Incidentally, the decline in textile exports in March ’16 was 42.1 per cent for China, 22.6 per cent for Vietnam and 34.4 per cent for Cambodia against the same month in the last year. Meanwhile, textile and RMG exports from Bangladesh to the US recorded an increase of 7.9 per cent in March this year compared to the same month in the last year.
Whereas, textile and RMG exports from India to the US increased by 15.3 per cent in March compared with same month last year while RMG exports from Pakistan to the US increased by 8.8 per cent. However, in volume terms Bangladesh RMG exports to US continued to surpass exports from India and Pakistan.
