Search Results for: India

Japanese paint manufacturers are facing challenging times – reducing costs where possible as the price of inputs rise, to reduce pressure on final product pricing as they deal with a local consumer market with declining consumption. Economic pressures caused by geo-political turbulence and the weak Japanese yen are both creating challenges, according to industry experts.…

Prospects of a bumper cotton crop on Pakistan this year (2023) and a planned extension to December 2027 of the country’s European Union (EU) GSP+ trade benefit status has raised hopes for increased sales by the Pakistan clothing and textile sector within the country’s government (1).…

The Indian clothing manufacturing sector is investing enthusiastically in new technology, but digitisation, AI, robotics and automation has yet to see jobs being shed on a significant scale, said industry experts. AI-powered automation of processes along with the abundant availability of skilled labour, is preparing the Indian garment industry to gain market share in the global trade, argues Harminder Sahni, managing director of Gurgaon, India-based consultancy Wazir Advisors: “Sampling, colour matching and approvals from foreign buyers, which used to be very time consuming, is now happening more and more online,” he told Just-Style.…

A wide variety of small garment orders for manufacturers could be made practical to manage through newly created digital systems developed in India, which can also reduce waste and conserve the environment.

“From growing cotton to dying fabric, 6,000 to 7,000 litres of water is spent on making one garment and eventually 30 percent of [apparel products] end up in landfills,” Gunish Jain, CEO of BlueKaktus, a fashion technology and garment manufacturing company, based in New Delhi, told Twinn, “Big brands have been ordering far in excess of their requirement but that is now changing.”…

The International Cocoa Organisation (ICCO) has predicted that the chocolate industry will continue to face cocoa supply deficits, with its latest quarterly assessment predicting that for 2022/3, there will be 99,000 tonnes more grindings than cocoa production. As a result, global stocks will fall to 1.744 million tonnes, amidst declines in output from key production hubs Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.…

With consumers becoming increasingly health conscious worldwide, demand for vegan chocolate, replacing dairy ingredients with plant-based materials, is growing fast.

According to US-based Grand View Research, the global vegan confectionery market – dominated by chocolate – is anticipated to generate USD2.62 billion in annual revenues by 2030, expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.9% from 2023’s USD1.23 billion.…

The New Zealand Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) has called for comments on planned reductions to allowable lead levels in paints, and in art materials such as chalk, crayons, and felt-tip pens.

The country’s current lead level limit for paint is 0.1% (1,000 parts per million/ppm) and the proposed changes would reduce this to 0.009% (90ppm), in line with countries including Australia, Canada and the United States, the EPA said in a note.…

Demands on flexible packaging designers to help products stand out on shelves while ensuring maximum protection for products and sustainable environmental credentials are a tough mix of requirements for packaging makers – but they are succeeding in delivering these goals.

There are many choices for innovators in the sector.…

Speakers at the Textile & Fashion Forum Helsinki 2023 have stressed the need to transform the textile sector from linear to circular economy principles, to achieve robust sustainable practices across the industry.

Leading textile and fashion professionals and experts stressed the need for green innovation at a two-day forum organised by Finland’s clothing and textile industry association Finnish Textile & Fashion and European industry organisation Euratex.…

This summer, Ferrero Rocher launched a Belgian eye-catching limited-edition range of its

flagship Nutella 700g glass jars, featuring 11 different must-see sights from Antwerp’s train station to Villers-la-Ville’s abbey, mirroring a ‘Love Your Country’ campaign that has run in Ferrero’s home country Italy.…

Over the past 50 years, generational differences in style and colour preference have altered demand for decorative paints, but geography and climate are also drivers when it comes to choosing interior coatings. More recently, at a more global level, differentiation has sharpened between the tastes of Baby Boomers and Generations Y (Millennials) and Z.…

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems advance, detection of trade-based-money laundering (TBML) should improve, but there are major drawbacks to widespread implementation, notably though a dearth of available trade data, and poor statistical harmonisation worldwide. Paul Cochrane reports.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-based learning has been used for the past decade by financial institutions to sift through vast amounts of data to spot anomalies as well as verify information.…

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems advance, detection of trade-based-money laundering (TBML) should improve, but there are major drawbacks to widespread implementation, notably though a dearth of available trade data, and poor statistical harmonisation worldwide. Paul Cochrane reports.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-based learning has been used for the past decade by financial institutions to sift through vast amounts of data to spot anomalies as well as verify information.…

The Indian confectionery industry, which according to London-based market researcher Euromonitor International, is expecting sales of Indian Rupees INR335.92 billion (USD4.05 billion) in 2023, up 13.4% year-on-year, excelling with consolidation, automation and advanced packaging.

Growth is seen in almost every confectionery and sweet bakery segment, as per Euromonitor data.…

The Indian confectionery industry, which according to London-based market researcher Euromonitor International, is expecting sales of Indian Rupees INR335.92 billion (USD4.05 billion) in 2023, up 13.4% year-on-year, excelling with consolidation, automation and advanced packaging.

Growth is seen in almost every confectionery and sweet bakery segment, as per Euromonitor data.…

Digitalisation is not only changing financial products and services, it is also shaping new roles and responsibilities of internal teams, pushing businesses to rely more heavily on treasurers to manage their company’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) KPIs, according to industry insiders.…

South Africa’s paints and coatings market is expected to generate USD2.1 billion by 2026 after growing at an estimated 5.6% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2021 and 2026. This is according to India-based market research and data analytics provider IndustryARC (1).…

Kenya is being opened as a potential outsourcing centre for European Union (EU) knitwear brands by a new EU-Kenya Economic Partnership agreement, now being considered for ratification by the EU Council of Ministers and the European Parliament (1). Once implemented, the deal will remove 12% and 9.6% EU duties charged on many knitted apparel exports from Kenya, potentially boosting a knitted apparel and accessory trade, growing in recent years.…

The textile and clothing industries of the European Union (EU) and India are closely monitoring negotiations to forge a free trade agreement (FTA), making steady progress since being relaunched last year (2022). Detailed talks were staged in New Delhi between June 17 and 23 (2023), with the EU seeking to reduce tariff barriers for India’s often protected market of 1.4 billion people.…

Companies in the nonwoven adhesives market are innovating to overcome geopolitical and environmental pressures forecast by market analysts to pose challenges for the next five years. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine’s impact on the global economy and energy prices; continued supply chain fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic; and growing sustainability concerns and associated regulatory changes are tough obstacles, claim market researchers OG Analysis, from Connecticut, USA.…

Chinese textile and clothing manufacturers are increasingly relying on Egyptian cotton, over the past two seasons becoming Egypt’s second largest buyer of cotton, driven by the US ban on Xinjiang cotton, competitive pricing, and strong demand for luxury fibres.

“China has always been a player in Egyptian cotton, but they were never on top of the list.…

AML vendors are keen to promote the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) in fighting ML and TF, helping obliged entities detect and block dirty money flows. But every technology can also be wielded by bad actors, and AI is no different.…

Kenya’s government has proposed imposing a 25% tariff increase on imported clothing and textiles, a move designed to wean Kenyans off luxury imported clothes, supporting a domestic clothing and textile industry that has been harmed deeply by foreign-made garment sales.

Confirming the intention to introduce the new tax measures, investments, trade and industry cabinet secretary (minister) Moses Kuria said the new taxes would help Kenya’s textile and clothing industry: “The country has a rich textile sector that should be expanded,” said Kuria on August 14, while addressing Kenyan textile investors.…

In the wake of the European Union’s (EU) impending sustainability-focused textile regulations and guidelines (1), Peru stands uniquely poised to amplify its exports of alpaca, camelid fibers, and cotton. This South American nation’s key to unlocking European markets lies in aligning its sustainability initiatives with the EU’s visions.…

While UK authorised push payment (APP) fraud losses were down 17% in 2022 year-on-year, they still cost victims GBP485.2 million (USD619 million) and comprised 57% of all reported cases relating to purchase fraud, with case volumes breaking 100,000 for the first time.…

Regulators worldwide are cracking down on poor labour and environmental practices in apparel supply chains amid growing concerns about upstream parts of the clothing industry. Probes into major international fashion brands, who have been criticised about alleged malpractice by their suppliers have been encouraging legislative and regulatory reforms.…

This year, tens of thousands of workers have been laid off by footwear production factories in and around Ho Chi Minh City, the centre of Vietnam’s USD24 billion footwear export industry.

Fo example, Pou Yuen Vietnam, a Taiwanese supplier for global giants including Adidas and Reebok, let go 5,744 employees through June and July, following a round of layoffs impacting 2,358 workers in February. …

Portugal’s footwear industry is trying to maintain its near-shoring position as a western production hub, while attracting more business as a reliable alternative to Asian manufacturing hubs, investing in innovation, quality and sustainability.

Portugal comprises an important part of the remaining European footwear sector, which according to the World Footwear Yearbook 2023 produced just 2.7% of global output in 2022 (1).…

A groundbreaking collaboration between Tunisia and China has yielded plans to develop a pioneering laboratory, solely dedicated to the realm of plasma physics, a key element of nuclear fusion research. The lab would be established in Tunisia’s prestigious National Engineering School of Tunis, within the University of Tunis – El Manar, in central Tunis, Tunisia’s capital.…

Artificial intelligence (AI) shows significant potential to revolutionise the packaging industry, from product design solutions to cost- and waste-reducing efficient process engineering.

According to Future Market Insights (FMI), a Pune, India-based market research provider, around 65% of global packaging organisations plan to invest in AI solutions in the foreseeable future.…

India’s tightly regulated tobacco leaf sector, producing the world’s second largest annual output of tobacco leaf at around 800,000 tonnes (following China and just ahead of Brazil), according to the Tobacco Board of India, is investing in modernisation to further strengthen this position, which includes a recent surge in export sales (1).  …

Sustainability is not only a marketing buzzword in the packaging sector, but also a legal and environmental necessity, even if it costs more, packaging experts have told Packaging Gateway. Notably, making recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is more expensive than virgin PET, and due to “limited availability and the high cost of recycled content,” PepsiCo used more virgin plastic than planned in 2022 according to its ESG [environmental, social and governance] 2022 report (1) released earlier this year (2023).…

China’s key government economic body has released restrictions on the use of iron oxide pigments and titanium dioxide, the most important white pigment used in the coatings industry. In July (2023), China’s National Development and Reform Commission and related departments issued an updated Notice on Issuing the Energy Efficiency Benchmark Levels and Baseline Levels in Key Industrial Fields, with 11 additional controls, including 11 key areas including titanium dioxide (TiO2).…

Business computer and phone users know they should not click on links in emails and texts from unknown senders. But malware developers are increasingly hacking into trusted online apps, inserting malicious code, downloaded by the unwary. Keith Nuthall, Raghavendra Verma and Jens Kastner report on this burgeoning threat.…

Packaging firms and brands are preparing for a boom in biomaterial packaging, fuelled by greater consumer demand, regulations to increase sustainability and the maturity of biomaterials. A report by Massachusetts, US-based management consulting firm Arthur D Little (1), released in 2022, said that investment has fuelled production improvements and capacity, easing the mass production of biomaterials derived from plants, animals or bacteria.…

International clothing brands have been hoping to see major outsourcing centres develop their own sustainable apparel markets, but this year’s choppy global economy has impeded sales to these potentially lucrative consumer bases.

Brazil, the world’s 10th largest economy, with 216 million people, was back in 2011 considered by US-based consultants A.T.…

Given the complexity of supply chains in the knitwear sector, it is no surprise that there are diverse ways in organising production. A key contrast is between the integrated model, where manufacturing stages are undertaken in house, and the cluster approach, where different units undertake several aspects of manufacturing, such as knitting of panels, embroidery, finishing and final assembly.…

Ethiopia’s Amhara region is engulfed in widespread conflict and with a state of emergency declared by the federal government on August 4 continuing, putting the status of thousands of students is in jeopardy as the unending strife threatens to disrupt the upcoming academic year.…

Since economic liberalisation and globalisation kicked in major economic growth in China since 1990, China’s food and beverage industry has expanded exponentially, boosting the country’s metal packaging industry (1).
London-based market researcher GlobalData (NOTE TO EDITOR – NO SPACE BETWEEN WORDS IN THIS COMPANY NAME) has forecast that China’s market will purchase more than 1 trillion units in 2024, with rigid metal packaging taking a 10.5% volume share of this vast financial cake (2).…

While traditional benefits delivered by adhesives in the automotive industry – lightweighting and the ability to bond diverse substrates – remain a constant, the relentless evolution of the battery electric vehicle (BEV), is driving innovation in the segment, manufacturers and market analysts agree.…

THE EUROPEAN and global fashion and textile industry is witnessing rapid technological advancements, requiring garment workers with specialised skillsets, notably digital, to meet evolving demands. Indeed, the November 2022 State of Fashion 2023 report (1) from strategy consultants McKinsey & Co made clear that after 18 months of robust growth (early 2021 until mid-2022) post Covid-19, the fashion industry is facing challenges, including inflation, the energy crisis and rising material prices, that increases its demand for skilled labour.…

The passage into law of the European Union’s (EU) long discussed carbon adjustment mechanism (CBAM) on May 17 (2023) could in future help EU finishing chemical producers sell more product to European textile manufacturers – but costs might rise as a result, impacting overall competitiveness.…

Bangladesh clothing manufacturers have been looking to expand export sales beyond their established markets in the European Union (EU), the United States, Canada and the UK, seeking new revenue in non-traditional markets such as Brazil, India, Japan and South Korea.

According to data from the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), Bangladesh apparel exports for 2022 (calendar year) have sourced 16.1% of revenue from non-traditional markets – USD7.35 billion, out of overall apparel exports of USD45.7 billion.…

The UN’s Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI) is developing practical guidance for HE ranking organisations wanting to integrate the delivery of sustainable development goals into their assessments of universities and colleges.

This initiative – highlighted at a HESI global forum https://sdgs.un.org/HESI…

Algae, especially microalgae, have come to inhabit nearly every ecosystem on the planet, including some of the most inhospitable – offering ideal sources for bio-based oils and fats, some with potentially novel uses. Indeed, over time, each species has evolved specific biochemistries and metabolic profiles to thrive in each habitat niche.…

The US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is pushing the European Union (EU) and the UK into paying more subsidies to attract battery electric vehicle (BEV) and battery production to Europe.

While the UK’s Advanced Propulsion Center (APC) forecasts 5 million more BEVs globally by 2030, requiring 3,306 gigawatt hours (GWh) in batteries, (1), the US and China may benefit more in production terms.…

The bounce back from Covid-19 lockdowns to the key south-east Asian economies of Malaysia and Singapore have seen robust growth in both countries, boosting paint and coatings sales, although the Malaysian market has some fragility this year.

Economic growth in both ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) members have been robust with data from the World Bank showing Malaysia’s GDP expanding from USD337.34 billion in 2020 to USD406.31 in 2022 (1) – its population being 33.5 million people.…

SOUTH Asian clothing, textile and footwear manufacturers are innovating to utilise a common natural input, plentiful in their local sub-tropical and tropical climates – banana fibre. Growth is particularly marked in Bangladesh. Textile factories have started developing the fibre, blending them with cotton to make apparel, sending samples and receiving enquiries from European customers.…

China’s sportswear brands have witnessed significant growth in sales during the Covid-19 pandemic, especially on domestic markets where consumers have embraced athleisure trends. Prominent examples include Beijing-based Li-Ning and Jinjiang-based Anta, which reported Chinese Yuan Renminbi-denominated sales growth of 14.3% (1) and 15.5% (2) respectively in 2022.…

The establishment of Study in Greece (SiG) as a national agency supported by Greek state is the latest step in an ongoing process to unlock a world of educational possibilities and deepen international collaboration to revitalise higher education in the country.…

The European textile industry is well positioned to lead the global sector towards a more sustainable future, this year’s ITMA 2023 international conference has been told. Alberto Paccanelli, president of Euratex, which represents over 143,000 companies in the European Union (EU) textile and clothing industry, told Just Style at the Milan (June 8-14) event that the European Commission’s Textiles Ecosystem Transition Pathway (1), released June 6, implementing the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles, could have a positive impact.…

The world’s 600 largest companies are failing to provide full disclosure of anti-bribery and corruption information within their sustainability reporting, according to a joint report (1) backed by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC). Working with from Transparency International UK and the World Economic Forum’s Partnering against Corruption Initiative.…

International AML/CFT rules and guidance have been designed to help governments crack down on criminals and terrorists, but there are few guiderails to prevent states from abusing these tools to target political opponents. Given the membership of FATF and FATF-style regional bodies, and the Egmont Group of FIUs is practically universal, that means AML/CFT systems are available to authoritarian states.…

The secretiveness with which China guards its tobacco news and figures – even of tobacco leaf production – says much about the state’s priorities under President Xi Jinping. This strongman leader who has of late prioritised security/repression over economic growth, has blocked the site of the China National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC), the national tobacco monopoly, to users outside China.…

The major Bhadla Solar Park in India’s desert state of Rajasthan has been leading the country’s transition towards renewable energy for its fast-growing economy and 1.4 billion people. However, the momentum in its roll-out has been hindered by difficulties encountered in laying transmission lines.…

While the benefits of implementing artificial intelligence (AI) into the paints and coatings industry are well accepted, from the deployment of painting robots to achieve better vehicle finishes in the automotive manufacturing industry, and even consistent production of paint itself, the latest range of chat-based AI tool offers additional benefits say experts.…

The Covid-19-related increase in waste from disposed personal protective equipment (PPE) has focused attention on nonwovens waste management.

For instance, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said 1.5 billion units of PPE, much of which nonwovens, weighing 87,000 tonnes, were procured between March 2020 and November 2021 alone and shipped to support countries’ urgent Covid-19 under UN emergency work alone.…

THE COVID-19 pandemic brought many changes to the world, and changes in fashion that incorporated a desire to enjoy a healthy lifestyle was one. With many consumers spending more time at home, including during working hours, demand for comfortable clothes with functionality to aid indoor and outdoor exercise has boomed.…

Textile manufacturers and researchers have been relentlessly developing new antimicrobial solutions for performance and protective clothing, especially focusing on sustainability.
The global antimicrobial textile market, which also includes antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral products, was valued at USD10.8 billion in 2020, expected to reach USD14.7 billion in 2027, according to India-based market researcher Qualiket Research (1). …

The Brazilian textile sector has been increasing investment in digital printing, modernising its finishing to boost international competitiveness to offer near-sourcing services to American and European clients as western buyers review their China sourcing.

India-based business intelligence service Infinium Global Research, in a report sent to Digital Textile, said the Brazilian digital textile printing market was worth USD28.37 million in 2022, projected to rise to USD75.25 million by 2030.…

The Indonesian government is drafting a regulation to ban lead-based paints in the country, Markus Winarto, the secretary-general of the Indonesian Paint Manufacturers Association (APCI) has told PPCJ. The government has been under pressure from environmental health activists to take this step – one already taken in the Philippines, for example, but is facing some difficulties in finding alternatives for certain applications such as road markings and anti-corrosion coatings, said Winarto.…

The Brazilian textile sector has been increasing investment in digital printing, modernising its finishing to boost international competitiveness to offer near-sourcing services to American and European clients as western buyers review their China sourcing.

India-based business intelligence service Infinium Global Research, in a report sent to Digital Textile, said the Brazilian digital textile printing market was worth USD28.37 million in 2022, projected to rise to USD75.25 million by 2030.…

Global negotiators continue to chase the dream of an international agreement on trading food and drink products, despite talks having continued, without agreement, since 2001. That was when the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Doha Development Round of talks were launched, with the key goal of revamping the WTO agreement on agriculture, which covers food and drink.…

An ACCA co-hosted conference in Dubai has heard how today, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) bloc companies should not view meeting ESG (environmental, social, governance) standards as an optional add-on, which may help marketing, but as a prerequisite for commercial long-term survival.…

The highly versatile material graphene is becoming increasingly popular in a variety of health and safety uses in nonwoven products, despite calls for further research to be conducted to assess its long-term impact on toxicity in humans and the environment.

Demand for graphene’s powerful antimicrobial and filtration qualities grew sharply during the Covid-19 pandemic, especially for incorporation in nonwoven masks.…

Can blockchain technologies help the textile industry resolve past transparency weaknesses in the supply chain, as well as inefficient inventory management, by facilitating fundamental changes to existing supply-chains and processes. Blockchain technologies’ decentralised storage of immutable records of physical asset transactions within digital ledgers, say some experts, can help transform the textile industry throughout the supply chain, from source (raw material point of origin) to shopfloor (brands and retailers).…

As researchers continues to identify health and environmental problems created by textile chemicals that have been widely utilised in the past, regulation tightens, and while this is rarely by international treaty, controls do spread worldwide over time. This is certainly the case regarding perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which have been commonly used within the clothing and textile sector for fire protection, water repellence and oil resistance, preventing stains.…

With the world’s illicit economy making up between 7% and 15% of global GDP according to the International Coalition Against Illicit Economies (ICAIE) (1), a national security NGO based in Washington DC, the need for robust law enforcement, including AML controls is clear.…

Can blockchain technologies help the textile industry resolve past transparency weaknesses in the supply chain, as well as inefficient inventory management, by facilitating fundamental changes to existing supply-chains and processes. Blockchain technologies’ decentralised storage of immutable records of physical asset transactions within digital ledgers, say some experts, can help transform the textile industry throughout the supply chain, from source (raw material point of origin) to shopfloor (brands and retailers).…

The fact that AML/CFT is expensive is widely appreciated by governments and international organisations, but they still support policies and programmes that cost a considerable proportion of the USD274.1 billion that LexisNexis Risk Solutions says is lavished on financial crime compliance (1).…

India’s Birla Cellulose, a world leader in producing viscose staple fibre, is targeting improvements in production sustainability. After achieving production of fibre comprising 20% textile waste and 80% wood pulp from certified sustainably grown and harvested forests, Birla Cellulose now plans to raise the proportion of waste in inputs to 30% textile waste, with the goal of producing 100,000 tonnes of this circular fibre across all categories in its products by 2024.…

Egypt was one of the fastest growing paint markets in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in 2021 and early 2022, but the depreciation of its currency on foreign exchange markets, surging inflation and an economic downturn over the past year is now depressing the sector.…

Despite high production costs and continued geopolitical instability, Italy’s domestic market for paints and coatings performed well in 2022 thanks to government tax credit schemes that boosted the building sector. Indeed, according to national paint trade and industry association Assovernici, Italy’s paints and coatings market posted overall satisfactory performance in 2022.…

South Asian clothing manufacturers are facing lean times, with international brands reducing or cancelling orders, but industry association leaders are looking towards a recovery by the end of this year. In major production hub Bangladesh, key purchasers from the USA and Europe have been cutting their order books as continuing high inflation depresses consumer demand and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sharpens nervousness among corporates and investors.…

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine launched last February (2022) has severely damaged Ukraine’s digital textile printing segment, and while it has also harmed the Russian industry, this sector has performed better than expected, despite comprehensive western sanctions.

In Ukraine, where the invasion had killed 8,101 civilians by February 28 (UN data), the country’s light industry, including its digital textile printing sector, continues to suffer from bombardment, logistical bottlenecks and persistent power cuts.…

Russia’s bio-based oil sector looks set to benefit from the spoils of war, being poised to become the new global leader in the export of sunflower oil over the current agricultural year, overtaking past export leader Ukraine, which its military has invaded since last February, with 8,317 civilian deaths as of March 20 (2023).…

Turkey’s textile and clothing sector is grappling with the fact that around a third of the country’s garment and textile production capacity was clustered around the epicentre of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that has killed more than 47,000 people, left millions homeless and destroyed hundreds of thousands of buildings.…

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) textile industry needs ambitious investment and a strong state aid subsidy plan to survive rising energy costs, enabling them to continue operating efficiently in global markets, European textile experts have told WTiN.

“Since last summer, the EU textiles sector has been faced with sky-high gas and energy prices and this puts further pressure on an already strained supply chain,” the European apparel and textile confederation (Euratex) senior policy officer for trade and industry Paolo Sandri noted.…

After weathering a Covid-impacted 2021, Vietnam’s apparel and footwear sectors rebounded in 2022, along with the rest of the economy, and while they are looking forward to medium-term expansion, 2023 could be a rocky ride.
Exports of footwear in the first half of 2022, for example, rose 13% by value compared to the same period in 2021, according to data released by the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) the state-run news agency (1).…

Fresh food manufacturers worldwide are developing intelligent packaging that can help them reduce both food and plastic waste, responding to regulatory and consumer pressure to minimise their products’ environmental footprints.

Such bio-innovations may be of particular importance to European Union (EU) food manufacturing companies, given the EU is revising its packaging and packaging waste directive.…

The agreement of the first two International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) standards may help new tech-based data networks unlock capital and investment flows to smaller businesses and especially in emerging markets, a symposium in Montréal, Canada, has been told.

A panel of development experts speaking at the event on Friday (Feb 17) noted how artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning-based data platforms can mesh with digitised smaller businesses, helping entice investors seeking sustainable opportunities.…

China’s Zhongguancun Inspection, Testing and Certification Industry Technology Alliance has released a standard to promote Chinese conformity with European Union’s (EU) REACH chemical control regulation in the automotive industry. The standard proposes REACH-compliant restrictions on REACH-regulated automotive chemicals, including paints and coatings.…

A desire to contribute to nation-building and improve standards of universities within Somalia is luring Somali intellectuals to return home to work in academia.

Professor Abdullahi Barise, the founding president of the City University of Mogadishu, said his institutions and others were welcoming this increasing number of foreign-educated Somalia lecturers and professors.…

Paradigm shifting technology involving collaboration between different scientific disciplines looks set to strengthen the impact of medical adhesives on clinical care as unhealthy lifestyles fuel increasingly diverse interventions, according to researchers and industry observers.

With sustainability “a front and centre priority”, said Paul Saunders, senior manager, global marketing, for Avery Dennison, a Los Angeles, USA-based material science company, issues such as bone reconstruction, wound management, haemorrhage prevention and drug dispensing devices are all being enhanced, with adhesives development a key element.…

Traceable pigments are increasingly being used as a favoured trackable method to help textile and garment companies prove that cellulosic fibres utilised in fabric and final products have been made according to high social and environmental sustainability standards. With regulation, non-financial reporting and green consumer demand pushing the industry towards using fabrics that are demonstrably sustainable, cellulosic fibres derived from wood pulp and other woody plants such as bamboo, have become more attractive as inputs.…

India’s textile sector is working with the country’s strong IT industry and professionals to deliver monitoring and labelling systems that comply with forthcoming digital product passport (DPP) requirements being pioneered especially in the European Union (EU). Its executive, the EU, released plans last March (2022), to pass rules that would insist that products, including textile lines, are released with detailed electronic information demonstrating that their materials sourcing and final manufacture are sustainable.…

While some commentators say the textile and clothing industry’s automation level remains low with investment being too sluggish and unambitious, others predict a bright future where robots and humans collaborate in sustainable customised design and manufacturing. 

The clothing segment of the sector has, of course, been historically labour-intensive – with associated high costs – with manufacturers hesitant to adopt greater automation, given the availability of low-cost labour in cheap outsourcing centres.  …

The paint markets of the Gulf region’s two largest economies, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have rebounded since the Covid-19 pandemic and are slated for growth, driven by major investments in real estate and infrastructure projects.

“Over the past 18 months, we have seen a flat and slightly declining paint markets in the region.…

Worldwide, coatings companies specialising in manufacturing road pavement surface coatings are experiencing tailwinds, as the public and private sectors increasingly grow aware that these coatings present affordable solutions to major environmental problems.

A South Korean pavement surface coating developed by Incheon-based start-up Jchi Global (1), that reduces the scattering of fine dust in the atmosphere – which the World Health Organisation (WHO) says causes 7 million deaths-a-year worldwide from cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases (asthma, COPD), and more.…

International solar energy providers are finding business opportunities in Africa as national governments and their development agency partners try to foster growth while targeting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG), which encourages access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all by 2030 (1).…

European Union (EU) food manufacturers are facing the potential imposition of new rules on the presence of nitrosamines in food products, following a European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) review that ended in November. EFSA has concluded that “it is highly likely that for all age groups dietary exposure to nitrosamines is above the level that could indicate a health concern”.…

The Egyptian garment and textile sector has rebounded from the dip caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, with orders returning in 2021 and exports strong in the first half of 2022. Sluggish consumer demand in the country’s primary export markets of the USA and Europe has however seen orders weaken over the past third 2022 quarter.…

Innovation in athleisure gear continues to drive performance improvements, with an eye to boosting sustainability, as consumers become more environment conscious, and regulation toughens up.

Of course, making such improvements is no easy feat today given the entire supply chain is facing “unprecedented challenges,” warned Davide Vigano, CEO of tech textile manufacturer Sensoria, based in Redmond, Washington state, USA, as shipping delays hinder the delivery of components, and transport prices increase as energy costs also soar, pushed up by Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine. …

High value banknotes remain of concern to AML regulators, even though they are increasingly being withdrawn from circulation. Despite the growth of electronic payments, the amount of physical cash in circulation remains huge. The USD remains the currency that circulates most widely in the world, with the US Currency Education Programme (a Federal Reserve scheme) saying that there was USD2 trillion in circulation by the start of 2021 (December 31, 2020).…

A key question in any industry is to what extent robotics will be able to replace the human hand. This issue is especially pertinent for textiles and clothing – where sensor-based automation increasingly carries out human tasks such as assessing the feel of textiles and quality control.…

While forecasts of a global recession are far from conclusive, the World Bank has in its latest international economy assessment released in September (2022) warned that such a downturn is a real possibility for 2023. (1) The reason is potential government spending tightening to deal with inflation rates not witnessed since the 1990s or earlier: “To stem risks from persistently high inflation, and in a context of limited fiscal space, many countries are withdrawing monetary and fiscal support,” noted the bank.…

In the wake of devastating floods in three of Pakistan’s provinces – Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan – the country’s textile and garment industries are facing multiple challenges compounding the destruction of cotton crop at a large-scale.

The country’s textile and apparel industries fear a major dent in export volumes, with competitiveness harmed by them having to import raw materials as a result.…

Consumers of athleisure and performance gear will drive demand for sustainability in this segment, before requirement in materials and industrial processes are mandated by regulations, textile industry observers have indicated. As a result, existing brands have been warned by market experts to focus on product development, facing competition from newcomers keen to capitalise on increases sales for this segment witnessed during the Covid-19 pandemic. …

While FATF assessments focus on the policy and regulatory response of governments, law enforcement and AML agencies in fighting dirty money, the fact remains that these efforts are undertaken by teams – and how these groups’ staff members work together and are managed underscores their effectiveness.…

The tobacco industry is a global sector, with supply chains spanning the world. Muslim consumers – and there are 1.97 billion if them – are an important part of any tobacco major’s market portfolio, not to mention local Muslim companies. But a key challenge for tobacco companies targeting Muslim smokers, vapers and other consumers is religion – some Muslim scholars say tobacco is haram, and not in keeping with Islamic guidance, because of mental and physical impact on smokers.…

The UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution on Sri Lanka on Thursday October 6 calling for accountability, human rights and reconciliation in this important clothing manufacturing outsourcing centre that has suffered from intense political and economic turmoil. There is growing international pressure on the new Sri Lanka government of President Ranil Wickremesinghe to promote calm (1) as the country grapples with financial shortages, logistical disruption and political legitimacy problems, worsened by widespread government corruption.…

Times might be tough in Italy, with annual inflation at 9.4% (in September) and sluggish growth of 2.5% projected for 2022 (OECD data), but Italians are drinking more coffee, including supermarket sales for home-brewed drinks.

In 2021, Italian roasted mass market retail coffee sales exceeded EUR1.3 billion overall, said IRI, up 1.1% year-on-year, driven by the single-serving pods and capsules and grains segments.…

Enforcement action to tackle foreign bribery in compliance with the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention (1) declined from 2018 to 2021, according to Transparency International (TI), after reviewing 47 leading export economies. These were 43 convention signatories plus China, India, Hong Kong and Singapore.…

THE Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation, owner of India’s leading dairy brand Amul, could become the leader of a planned multi-state association of five major Indian cooperative bodies promoting organic Indian food products.

The other cooperatives are the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO), the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (NAFED), the National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) and Krishi Bharatiya Cooperative Limited (KRIBHCO).…

Continuing to fight supply-chain snarls, material shortages, inflation woes, and a stubborn pandemic, the US paint and coatings industry produced 1.3 billion American gallons (4.9 billion litres) valued at USD27.2 billion (US dollars) in 2021.

That is according to The ChemQuest Group, a global specialty chemicals and materials consulting service based in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, which said this production was an increase of just 0.1% in volume and 8.6% in value over the previous year.…

China’s nonwovens industry is preparing for ongoing long-term growth, bolstered by increasing demand for nonwovens globally and inspired by the drive for digitisation within the country, to improve manufacturing productivity and efficiency. With support from national government policy and initiatives to boost digitisation in nonwovens manufacturing, industry majors and small-and-medium-sized business owners alike are pursuing greater use of industry 4.0 tech, noted the Europe-China Eco Cities Link Project, a project backed by the European Union (EU) and the Chinese government [1].…

The exchange of intelligence is a key element of AML/CFT, with FATF’s recommendations 36 to 40 focusing on international cooperation. The Egmont Group of FIUs also continues to hone how it securely delivers exchanges of sensitive AML/CFT information between its 167 members.…

Pakistan’s clothing and textile industry fears that the value of its exports may tumble at least 30%, after the recent floods wiped out much of the country’s usually plentiful cotton crop. To keep running, the sector is looking for strategies to buy cheaper cotton abroad and is asking for government aid to finance this task.…

India’s nascent wine market is dominated by domestic brands trying to overcome low awareness about wine among Indian consumers, while dealing with high taxation and cumbersome trading regulations. However, these wine companies are confident of achieving high sales growth in the short and medium term, with market projections looking healthy, even if they vary widely.…

The need to reduce the environmental impact of the dairy sector, promoting sustainability, may limit the growth of the industry internationally, but the world’s largest milk producer, India, is projected to double its turnover within the next five years, a global conference has been told.…

The Indonesian government is ramping up its requirement for government-funded construction to use locally-made products by insisting paint and coatings manufacturers seeking to supply such projects use national standardisation and certifications.

This, said the chairman of the Indonesian Paint and Coatings Association, Markus Winarto, is part of a trade ministry directorate general of chemical, pharmaceutical and textile industries campaign to reduce imported products.…

With ongoing floods and high rainfall in most parts of Pakistan damaging its economy, the country’s textile and clothing sector, accounting for nearly 60% of national exports, is bracing itself for the potential cancellation of export orders by international buyers.

The initial assessment of losses inflicted by the devastating rains and floods especially in Sindh and Balochistan provinces and to a lesser extent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and Punjab provinces, has already been estimated by the federal government at billions of dollars (it is working on a more precise estimate), with displacement of 33 million people, 1,400 deaths (including children), the destruction of hundreds of thousands of houses, roads infrastructure and communication networks.…

The Russian textile sector has been struggling to cope with the international sanctions from the US, European Union (EU), UK, Japan and others and the disruption caused by the exit of international companies from Russia, following its invasion of Ukraine.

Russia’s GDP declined 4% in the second quarter and will shrink by 7.8% throughout 2022, predicts the ministry of economic development.…

An environment-friendly development in creating a key component of polyester has been hailed as a “path-breaking innovation that can change the future of the textile value chain and help the industry in moving toward its sustainability goal”.

This was the view of Gurudas Aras, a textile chemical consultant bases in Mumbai, India.…

Zimbabwe was taken off FATF’s grey list in March, but serious issues still abound claim critics of the move – from corruption to large scale gold smuggling, while a controversial law on NGOs may be misused to go after political opponents, they argue.…

INTRODUCTION 

With the textile industry under pressure from consumers, regulators and standards to become more sustainable, companies are looking at all aspects of the supply chain – including upstream to fibre production. Digitalisation has a key role to play here, especially in supplier countries where the use of such technology is weak – such as in Africa.…

The Indian garment manufacturing industry is optimistic about the impact of a free trade agreement (FTA) between its country and the European Union (EU), which it thinks could be concluded next year (2023).

“It would be a game changer,” Gautam Nair, chairman of the export promotion committee of India’s Apparel Export Promotion Council told Just Style, highlighting how an anticipated “9.6 to 12 percent duty [reduction] makes a big difference in our competitive business.”…

The technical textile market looks set to ride out current turbulence caused by inflationary and geopolitical pressures, including Russian militarism, with a projected uptick in global performance – research and industry commentators predict. But plans for onshoring and innovation investments might be delayed as day-to-day costs continue to rise.…

Sri Lanka’s unprecedented economic and political crisis escalated early this week (July 9) amidst mass public protests forcing the country’s now former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country to Maldives, before finally quitting the top job yesterday. Notwithstanding the chaos, its textile and knitwear and woven apparel sector has so far managed to keep the industry afloat so far.…

From boosting root growth to nicotine detection, weeding out carcinogens, cleansing filters and promoting sustainability and smart interaction with retailers and smokers, researchers are suggesting that the so-called ‘wonder material’ graphene has a plethora of uses within the tobacco industry.…

The rapid escalation of Sri Lanka’s political and economic crisis, causing its former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign, has had far-reaching implications for the country’s clothing and textile manufacturing sector, which plays a crucial role in the nation’s economy.…

India’s premium spirits market is growing fast with rising incomes and sharply falling prices in many states boosting sales. India’s gross national income per head in 2021 was USD7,220 compared to USD4,190 in 2010, according to World Bank data. With more money, “Indians are drinking better, but unlike the west [also] drinking more,” Ruchika Gupta, marketing director of Beam Suntory told Just Drinks.…

With corporate fraud rising fast, “hiring for character as well as competence is now the hottest trend” in recruitment practice, Bruce Weinstein, a high-profile USA-based business ethics speaker has told Fraud Intelligence. Securing honest senior managers and board members matters, said the self-styled ‘The Ethics Guy’, who has worked for All State Insurance, the National Football League, Northrop Grumman, the South Carolina National Guard, and more: “It is not only possible to do this; it is essential,” Mr Weinstein stressed.…

India’s production of pashmina, the most exclusive of the cashmere fibres, is to receive an important government boost through acquiring a geographical indication (GI) from India’s Geographical Indications Registry for product sourced and spun in the Himalayan region of Ladakh.

The government of the union territory of Ladakh, which runs the mountainous territory in which Indian pashmina is producer applied for the GI certificate last year (2021) and hopes to receive authorisation the next few months.…

With the lifting of the Covid-19 induced lockdown in Shanghai at the start of June, the world’s largest wool exporters are hoping for less disruption to their business with China. But ongoing Covid outbreaks in the country, alongside the government’s continued zero-Covid policy, whereby cities are closed to control infections, and a backlog at its ports, are still causing concern.…

INTRODUCTION 

Customisation is a key trend for a clothing and textile industry that looking to harness new technology to deliver consumer choice and flexibility over supply chains, including reshoring. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, in addition to widespread automation of processes throughout the garment supply chain, has been hailed as a game changer.…

A lack of common international Islamic financial regulatory system is hindering the development of Islamic social finance instruments, causing a dearth of good practice solutions that could effectively fight poverty, say experts.

In the February 2021 issue of the ISRA (International Shari’ah Research Academy) International Journal of Islamic Finance, Abdulsalam Ahmed Sawmar and his co-authors say one key element of Muslim charity – zakat (obligatory charity) – historically, “has been an integral part of the Islamic economic system because of its sizable impact in achieving social harmony and preserving decent living standard for the needy segments of Muslim communities.”…

Time was when hijabs were simply religious garb for Muslim women that covered their head and chest of religiously observant women. But hijab design has become increasingly sophisticated in recent years, with wearers wanting elegance while expressing their religious identity.

In Bangladesh, for example, online fashion influencers have been particularly influential since the mid-2010s, promoting different hijab trends and styles online, with local entrepreneurs increasingly producing and selling hijabs online, especially via Facebook.…

India’s predominant vegetarianism, religious complexities and a recent spurt in Islamophobic politics has stalled the development of a halal segment in a food and drink sector that serves a country of 1.38 billion people.

Despite serving the world’s second largest Muslim population of more than 210 million, according to the US-based Pew Research Center, Indian food manufacturers do not generally display ‘halal’ on any food labels, except meat.…

A campaign to boycott Indian products in Islamic countries because of anti-Muslim comments made by leaders of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may have died down for now but given the continuing Hindu-Muslim tensions in India, the risk of future supply disruption remains, warn economists.…

A spate of recent high-profile investigations into suspected money laundering through cryptocurrency and a failure to prevent it have drawn attention to the capacity of law enforcement to tackle AML/CFT activity in the crypto sphere.

In July 2021, the UK’s Metropolitan Police force in London said it had seized a record GBP180 million (USD219 million) worth of cryptocurrency linked to international money laundering.…

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting unprecedented international sanctions has disrupted an ongoing shift in Russia’s finishing sector towards digital textile printing. “Digital textile technologies are something new both for the entire world and for Russia. But we have a special interest in them.…

Researchers have created an eco-friendly graphene-based nanofilter to remove dyes from textile wastewater, prompting scientists to claim another important industrial use for what has been called a ‘super material’. In the finishing segment, specialists have argued the filter could be a “game changer” for an industry facing increasing regulatory pressures and sustainability market demands.…

Growing environmental concerns and rising awareness of sustainable energy resources is driving considerable growth in the global used cooking oil (UCO) market. Production is also being boosted by recent technological advancements in UCO processing, expanding supplies from the rapidly evolving foodservice industry and initiatives by various governments to promote UCO for industrial use.…

Fighting money laundering is tough enough in peacetime, requiring the careful application of sophisticated and complex investigative techniques, so outbreaks of war can damage efforts to fight ML and terror financing. The chaos of war can also provide opportunities for financial crime and the laundering of its proceeds, including the evasion of sanctions.…

The United Nations Environment Assembly’s (UNEA) planned global pact on plastic may act as a further disruptor and consolidator of efforts to address plastic packaging in the dairy industry. The legally binding agreement, which UN member states agreed would be concluded by 2024, according to a March 2022 announcement, aims to facilitate an end to plastic pollution by addressing the lifecycle of plastic, from design and production to disposal.…

Marketers for the planned Saudi Arabia megacity of Neom, a key plank of the kingdom’s Vision 2030 strategy of economic growth and diversity, will highlight it site’s ancient religious heritage and develop adventure tourism to attract five million international tourists-a-year (by 2030).…

The costs of investigating fraud have increased over the past three years, according to 79% of respondents to a global survey, with 26% overall and 49% of companies with a turnover of more than USD15 billion seeing this increase as significant, said risk assessment specialists Kroll.…

With financial fraud booming, the market for forensic accounting – uncovering financial crime through the study of accounting data, bank records and associated company data – is also growing fast.

A report from US and UK-based Market Research Future (MRFR) issued last October (2021) predicted that the global forensic accounting market would be worth annual receipts of USD8.85 billion by 2025, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.2%.…

 Chinese consumers are displaying an increasingly keen interest in sustainable fashion, being aware from personal experience that pollution can have a disastrous impact not only on the overall environment but also on their health. A Chinese University of Hong Kong report in 2018, for instance, concluded air pollution caused an average 1.1 million premature deaths in China.…

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a disruptive force across the clothing and textile industry, and it has affected consumer taste as well as shaking up supply chains, notably in home textiles, which are increasingly finished by digital printing.

With changes in demand proving very fluid because of lockdown lives lived at home, and an increase in underlying personal stress, digital printing designs have sought to tap a need for feelings of wellness and calm.…

With moves to sustainability conformity strengthening across the textile industry, rules protecting consumers and finishing workers, as well as the environment, are strengthening, notably to reduce textile dye allergies. Dye producers Colorifix, from Norwich, East Anglia, England, says this has led to “biology replacing chemistry” in dye production, enabling finishers to market products as provide positive health benefits not just preventing allergic reactions.…

INTRODUCTION

In the competitive and innovative world of smart textile manufacturing and sale, companies strive to maximise functionality and minimise costs. Their ingenuity is the basis of their competitiveness. But as with all industries, some costs are out of their control.…

Digital textile printing will help Malaysia’s textile industry adopt greater automation as it tries to cope with a tight labour supply, the Malaysian Textile Manufacturers Association has said.

Its president Tan Thian Poh said the digital textile print segment will take centerstage, as fabric manufacturers cope with Malaysian government immigration restrictions on foreign workers for all industries.…

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has disrupted energy supplies and raised concerns about the future availability of oil and gas, inflating these commodity prices and hence energy prices, increasing textile and apparel processing costs worldwide. On December 21, as Russia was preparing to send its military into Ukraine-government controlled territory (February 24), Brent crude was selling for USD71.57 a barrel.…

Companies in Japan that export paint and coatings and related chemicals ingredients to Russia and Belarus may face a trade ban if those items have been classed as ‘advanced goods’ under a May 20 amendment to Japan’s Export Trade Control Order.…

INTRODUCTION 

The connection of information and operational technology through smart factories makes for undeniable improvements in manufacturing efficiencies, in output and cost. But all new technologies spark fresh vulnerabilities for attacks by criminals. Given the latent strength of smart factories is in connectivity, cyber-attacks are their most important illicit threat.…

The gap between halal and natural beauty is narrowing down as halal beauty brands integrate more natural and vegan ingredients into their products, and global cosmetics companies use more ingredients that are inherently halal.

“In essence, the majority of halal ingredients are of non-meat origin, hence vegan products, for example, are by default usually halal,” Amna Abbas, consultant for beauty and fashion at Euromonitor International told Salaam Gateway.…

Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has disrupted the supplies of food, especially cereals, to major halal food markets, with Ukraine and Russia togethering controlling around 30% of the global wheat trade. The military action, which the UN said on April 17 had killed 2,072 civilians, has put the Middle East and North Africa in a tight position over food supplies, especially given the region’s economies have been weakened by the Covid-19 crisis.…

Bangladesh is emerging as a major supplier for high-value suits in Europe and the US, taking advantage of the disruption faced by manufacturers in China, Vietnam, and Ethiopia during the Covid-19 pandemic. While Bangladesh faced its own supply chain and production disruption, China’s tough response to the pandemic has harmed its clothing production, Vietnam’s apparel sector has encountered labour shortages and Ethiopia’s Covid-19 woes have been worsened by civil war.…

With the Islamic finance sector growing fast – with global turnover valued at USD2.2 trillion, according to S&P Global Ratings’ Islamic Finance Outlook 2022 Edition, with a projected 12% growth between 2021 and 2022 – demand for higher education courses on the topic are growing fast.…

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) paint market has had a difficult past two years, but the sector is gradually rebounding, driven especially by major development projects and growth in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

“It has been tough period. Covid-19 had a significant impact on the MENA.…

The international oilseeds and related vegetable oil markets are facing major disruption through Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with global vegetable oil prices soaring, according to the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Its Vegetable Oil Price Index averaged 248.6 points in March, up 46.9 points (23.2%) from February, a new record high, driven by higher sunflower, palm, soy and rapeseed oil prices.…

Government regulations to control pollution coupled with increasing consumer awareness for biodegradable products look set to drive a 50% uptick in the global bio-adhesives market over the next three years. Standing at USD6 billion in 2020, the worldwide bio-adhesives market is forecast to reach USD9.6 billion by 2025 at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 10%, according to a 2021 report from analysts Market and Markets (1). …

The Bangladesh knitwear industry is looking to boost its exports of sweaters, competing with Chinese suppliers hampered by their government’s continuing tough lockdown responses to further outbreaks of Covid-19. Meanwhile, US tariffs imposed during the trade war launched by former American President Donald Trump persist, giving Bangladesh sweater exporters a continuing price advantage, augmenting its lower labour costs.…

Pakistan textile and clothing industry has witnessed many advances and retreats during the last 10 years. With the country operating a less draconian set of lockdowns than neighbouring countries in south Asia, it has leveraged recent investment by increasing clothing and textile exports.…

RUSSIA’s invasion of Ukraine will damage European Union (EU)-Russia trade in clothing including knitwear, but Russia will continue to make woolen clothes, say experts. Meanwhile, the war launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin is devastating Ukraine’s knitwear production and retail sector.…

Finishers are innovating to overcome the past weaknesses of natural and organic dyes such as low yields when extracting dyes from sources such as vegetation, insects or molluscs, inferior wash performance and weaker fastness in general, compared with synthetic dyes. 

A key focus of progress has been the improved use of mordants fixing natural dye stuff onto yarns and fabrics.…

A planned legally binding global agreement covering the lifecycle of plastics should hasten the regulation, proliferation and uptake of steps in the personal care product industry to eliminate plastic pollution, sector associations and experts.

Even before the decision in March (2022) by the United Nations Environment Assembly to conclude negotiations by 2024 on a pact to eliminate plastic pollution, cosmetics manufacturers of all sizes have been moving towards a more circular economy approach.…

The Covid-19 pandemic and latterly the Russian invasion of Ukraine has sparked an increase in cybercrime and fraud, and the halal sector – reliant on compliance with detailed production and sales standards – is a soft target for commercial criminals.

This fact is compounded by the proliferation of halal certificates as the sector expands worldwide.…

Mumbai-based home textiles manufacturer and exporter Welspun India is upgrading and diversifying the use of an innovative technology system – ‘Wel-Trak’ – which tracks cotton through various stages of manufacturing. Patented in 2017, this digital solution provides complete traceability of the raw material’s processing and manufacturing history, from its country of ginning to, weaving and manufacturing, including shipping details.…

United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based halal fast-food chain Chicking is planning to expand its geographic footprint with up to 30 new outlets across Canada by 2023.

The company opened its first ChickQueen branch in the multi-cultural city of Mississauga, Ontario, in May 2021, as part of a plan to expand to all major Canadian cities, AK Mansoor, founder and chairman of Chicking, told Salaam Gateway.…

Many Muslim countries, their governments and businesses, have adopted an uneasy neutrality towards Russia, as it continues its invasion of Ukraine.

Malaysia is a case in point – its close relations with European, north American and Asian countries (such as Japan and South Korea) means it will not want to breach their sanctions on Russia.…

The Vietnamese apparel sector is a great success story, but to maintain its strong position, the country will have to build backward linkages, while mitigating some deep-rooted cost and labour challenges. Data from the World Trade Organisation (WTO) shows that from the 1990s, the country’s garment industry has risen from a low base to overtaking Bangladesh’s exports’ sales in 2020, with USD29 billion overseas sales revenues, ranking second worldwide.…

The Russian clothing retail and manufacturing industry is suffering because of sanctions imposed because of its government’s invasion of Ukraine, but the sector’s close links to Asia and Turkey are likely to reduce the impact.

With the war continuing, Russian bombers today (March 17) bombed a theatre in Ukraine’s port city of Mariupol, Svetlana Melnichenko, president of the Saint Petersburg-based Chamber of Textile and Fashion, noted that Russians were not in the mood to buy new clothes: “It’s spring.…

CRIMINALS are using the war in Ukraine for criminal gain, exploiting financial vulnerability and an overstretched national police to profit from human misery. While the smoke has yet to clear, Ukrainian officials are already beginning to report increases in smuggling, scams, and fraud. …

Steadily falling costs of digital textile printing in India and the country’s central government’s success in developing the specialised skills needed to operate these technologies are paving the way for modern inkjet printers to replace conventional printing techniques in this key Asian textile manufacturing centre.…

The Asia-Pacific paint and coatings industry will play a key role the growing global nanotechnology-based coating market, with the region expected to register most significant expansion of production in the coming decade, said a market report titled Nano Coatings Market Size, Growth, Industry Analysis, 2022-2029, published in December 2021 by India-based DataM Intelligence (1).…

Global haircare brands are starting to recognise a gap in the Muslim market as they launch products for hijab-wearing women and include them in marketing campaigns. L’Oréal’s Kérastase is the latest international brand to target this segment, having positioned its first anti-hair fall (loss) range, Genesis, to appeal to hijab-wearing women in Malaysia.…

The proactive move by the mainly Muslim south Asian archipelago of Maldives to boost halal tourism will make this country a larger market for halal-certified food imports. Imported food sold to its permanent population of 540,500 must be halal food under Maldives Food and Drug Authority (FDA) regulations, said Dr Abdullah Shiham Hassan a senior Maldives lawyer and past head of law in the faculty of Shariah law at the Maldives National University: “This is checked and monitored by the FDA regularly.”  …

Roughly two decades after China entered the World Trade Organisation (WTO) (in December 2001) and nearly two-and-a-half years into the Covid-19 pandemic, the country’s textile and apparel sectors seem healthier than ever. Customs data show that in 2021, the cumulative export value of China’s textiles and clothing reached USD315.5 billion, a year-on-year increase of 8.4%.…

The European Association of Sugar Manufacturers (CEFS) has attacked the UK government for extending until December 2024 an import quota of 260,000 tonnes for raw sugar, claiming this could disrupt the European sugar industry and market. “The UK’s approach is alarming, since it undermines existing concessions offered to sugar producers around the world,” said CEFS, notably European Union producers and those from African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries who usually have some special access to EU markets (and formerly UK markets prior to Brexit).…

Major garment labels, technology innovators, environmental research companies and textile manufacturers are working hard worldwide to deliver sustainable solutions for cotton textile pre-treatment. Reducing levels of chemicals in wastewater, significantly decreasing the total amount of water used in processing in the first place and cutting energy use by as much as 75% are some of the benefits these new techniques are delivering to finishers.…

At a time when footwear companies are moving to tap high-quality and high-added value segments and niche markets, such as vegan shoes, attention is now turning to the sales potential being offered for sales of footwear that is halal-certified in wealthy non-Muslim majority markets such as Europe and north America.…

Chinese finishers are increasingly recognising the ability of digital textile printing to offer outsourcing manufacturing hubs increased flexibility and production quality. Last October (2021), Guangzhou-based startup Youbu Information Technology Co announced it collected “tens of millions of RMB” – Chinese Yuan Renminbi (USD1 buys CNY6.35) from angel investors to transform China’s clothing supply chain with digital printing.…

India’s 1.3 billion population with an average age of 29, has been witnessing steady growth in meat consumption. According to an OECD report, India consumed six million tonnes of meat in 2020 (4.6kg per person). Nearly half the population now consumes non-vegetarian meals once a week in India.…

Continuing supply chain problems, worsened by Covid-19, and price hikes for raw materials have depressed the outlook for sales faced by the German paint business in 2021. Germany’s Verband der deutschen Lack- und Druckfarbenindustrie (VdL), the industry association for coatings, paints and ink production, predicts that overall sales will have fallen 4% in 2021 compared to 2020, partly because because 2020’s DIY boom, fuelled by pandemic lockdown orders, has run out of steam.…

India’s large and diverse clothing and textile industry is flourishing through sustained domestic sales growth and lucrative government incentives.

Its increased reliance on man-made fibres (MMF), a sharper focus on technical textiles and the construction of mega production units have been major features defining the progress of India’s clothing and textile industry.…

THE EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has declared it will impose an effective European Union (EU) ban on using plastics containing the ingredient bisphenol A (BPA) as food contact materials. It is consulting on plans to reduce a tolerable daily intake by consumers of BPA to almost zero – 0.04 nanograms per kilogram of body weight per day.…

INTRODUCTION

The growth in digital textile printing across the Americas has created a surge in demand for a wide range of digital inks, which is spreading into Latin America as well as north America. The adaptability and broad uses of digital inks, for garments, household products, technical textiles, and more, fits the diversity of the textile sector in the Americas, which spans higher wage industries such as US textile production to lower cost manufacture in central America.…

Universities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Madagascar, Nigeria and Yemen have been highlighted as institutions where academics or students were killed because of their beliefs or activism in the past academic year, though a report from campaign group Scholars at Risk (SAR).…

INTRODUCTION

The Covid-19 pandemic has sparked a reassessment of the model of relying on one or two outsourcing locations. It has demonstrated that when there is a major disruption caused by an emergency as serious as a pandemic, shipping and industrial processing can be disrupted.…

Higher education institutions are being warned they could be a target for money laundering, with fees being financed by the proceeds of crime, including corruption, which might also buy property, cars and other items for students.

The problem has been highlighted in a series of reports.…

USA FIU FinCEN has sought to clarify ambiguities in how it will collect beneficial ownership information under ‘Anti-Money Laundering Act’ (AMLA) passed by Congress in January, highlighting significant weaknesses in the system, said an AML expert.

While the law increases transparency in US business by creating a new beneficial ownership register, authorising a new AML whistleblowing system, increasing AML fines, and expanding powers to subpoena foreign banks for AML/CFT information, the UBO system has significant exemptions.…

The second-largest garment exporting country in the world, Bangladesh has grown its position as a key outsourcing hub since the 1980s.  

With a global market share of 6.26%, according to the World Trade Statistical Review 2021 (1), “The industry has come a long way,” said Md. …

The Polish can manufacturing and filling industry continues to attract attention from major buyers and investors from around the world, aware that this strong and innovating national sector is able to rely on a strong, reliable workforce.

Global beverage giant PepsiCo, for example, has been drawn to the Polish can manufacturing industry.…

South Korea’s pharmaceutical industry, a global player with exports reaching South Korean Won KRW7.93 trillion (USD6.8 billion) in 2020, has been expanding its foothold in the world’s Muslim markets, offering guarantees that manufacturers avoid inputs that are offensive to Muslims.…

Halal food exports from India are growing fast, according to a key Indian certification organisation, with domestic consumers among India’s 200 million Muslims also being increasingly demanding about halal standards.

According to Faiyaz Khan, the master technologist in food technology, of certification body the Jamait-Ulama-I-Hind Halal Trust, the volume of halal certified exported food products sold from India have grown by more than 50% over the past two years.…

Halal experts and animal welfare activists around the world are seeking common ground on how to keep and slaughter animals in the most humane ways possible. Halal certification systems that forbid pre-slaughter stunning as haram is becoming an increasingly acute issue for countries with strong animal welfare culture traditions and growing Muslim populations.…

The Bangladesh food industry is increasing its efforts to export halal foods to Muslim majority population countries. A senior government delegation is planning to visit Turkey and Indonesia this year to gather facts and advice on improving Bangladesh sales in these countries of halal food.…

The executive director of the Chamber of the Textile and Apparel Industry, of El Salvador (CAMTEX – Cámara de la Industria Textil) has told Just Style how her manufacturing hub is seizing market opportunities growing as Covid-19 ebbs.

Patricia Figueroa, who has been in her job since 2015, also highlighted the challenges the Salvadoran clothing and textile industry will tackle in 2021-22, with CAMTEX’s help.…

Britain’s open register of beneficial ownership was groundbreaking worldwide but its effectiveness as a bulwark against money laundering is being debated, even as both the European Union (EU) and the US move ahead at varying pace to replicate the system. The question of whether BO registers should be open or closed is one that is being discussed in countries around the world.…

The Taiwan Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has initiated a revision of the island’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Management Law, partly to help paint and coatings manufacturers maintain access to the European Union (EU) market. The reform will take account of the EU’s planned Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which may levy duties on products the EU deems have been made with excess carbon emissions.…

Global supply chain delivery delays and price tensions continue to disrupt Italy’s otherwise robust food can production sector. With profit margins squeezed, food canners expect prices to rise across the board for these long shelf-life food staples

According to Italian can manufacturing industry association ANFIMA’s most recent data, Italy produced 698,523 tonnes of rigid metal packaging (tinplate and steel) and 24,745 tonnes of aluminium packaging in 2020, up 3.6% and 7% from the same period the previous year, respectively.…

The increasing decriminalisation and legalisation of cannabis as a recreational and medicinal substance has encouraged the liberalisation of hemp as a fibre crop, whose use in some jurisdictions had been restricted because of laws against the plant’s chemically-active ingredients.

This is starting to change, most notably in the USA, which used to have severe anti-marijuana laws, but which now has 18 states that have legalised recreational cannabis use.…

A comprehensive study of 3,650 students from 55 counties worldwide has indicated that the expansion of online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic has not reduced the attraction of moving countries to undertake in-person higher education in foreign universities and colleges.

Indeed, the study, by IDP Connect, part of Australia-based international student recruitment leader IDP Education, showed that 79% of students questioned were only considering overseas on-campus options.…

INTRODUCTION

Textile and clothing companies are well aware of two major trends driving sales in the industry – sustainability and digitisation. One is driven by the need to adopt sustainable manufacturing processes and materials, to boost sales amongst environmentally conscious consumers and reduce financial and regulatory costs associated with pollution and carbon emissions.…

The food halal market for Portugal, a largely Christian country that was in the early Middle Ages part of the Muslim world, has been expanding, serving a growing local Muslim community and Muslim tourists keen to taste Portuguese food.

Between 711 and 1249, most of Portugal was under Muslim rule, which influenced its language and culture.…

The Bangladesh innerwear industry has been witnessing robust growth in the past decade and this outsourcing hub is now competing effectively with its major rival China. The production value of the country’s intimate wear jumped from US216 million in 2012 to US1.078 billion in 2021, according to a report from data service Statista (1).…

India’s packaged cake industry is enjoying a significant rise in sales, as the country’s economy and society stabilises amidst declining coronavirus infection rates. This growth has prompted companies to invest heavily in innovative products and capacity expansion.

Industrially manufactured packaged cakes, pastries and sweet pies are projected to command annual sales of USD453.1 million during 2021, up from USD423.4 million in Covid-19 hit 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of 5.9% projected for 2020-25, according to market researcher (and owner of Just Food) GlobalData.…

Ethiopian textile and clothing managers and workers are worried that the USA may expel their county from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade access, as armed conflict continues in Tigray.

The US Trade Representative Katherine Tai has said America would “soon” decide on Ethiopia’s status under AGOA, which gives its clothing and textile exporters duty-free access to the United States.…

The Covid-19 pandemic, as a global crisis, will have worldwide long and short-term effects, although – of course – some counties have been, and will be, hit much harder than others.

Indeed, some countries, with fragile economies and weaker social systems, have been brought close to collapse by the coronavirus.…

The Covid-19 pandemic has delivered experience about how an external crisis – in this case health – that forces AML officers to work at home, poses challenges in maintaining professional excellence. According to the Bank for International Settlements’ Financial Stability Institute an estimated 300 million office workers worked from home in May 2020, including 90% of banking and insurance workers.…

INTRODUCTION

While debates continue over whether Aristotle actually said ‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts’, the concept that a system can deliver more impact than each element of its technology acting alone is well established in the textile sector.…

INTRODUCTION

Financial crime is a minefield for the international textile and clothing industry. With extended international supply chains extending into jurisdictions where the rule of law and a reliable independent judiciary may have a weak hold, if they exist at all, textile and clothing brands and manufacturers must take care.…

INTRODUCTION

Without doubt, the world’s clothing and textile sector is undertaking a technical upgrade that is unprecedented in decades, with new digital systems offering automation and efficient internal controls. As these are worked into the businesses of brands, manufacturers and their suppliers, a new potential emerges, and that is linking these digital systems in a way that could revolutionise efficiencies within the supply chain.…

The home textile sector is a strong growth segment for digital investments within the industry and the amount of innovation indicates this expansion has some way to go. There are good reasons why this segment is well suited to digitalisation. One is the rectangular form of most bed sheets, curtains and tablecloths – which aids fully automated cutting and sewing.…

London and New York-based WPP, the world’s largest advertising group, has agreed to pay USD19.2 million to resolve charges laid by the USA’s Securities & Exchange Commission that it breached the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The SEC alleged WPP allowed overseas subsidiaries to bribe clients and breach accounting controls.…

Fraud, corruption and money laundering is hitting the world’s biggest corporations hardest, despite these companies bolstering their financial crime defences, according to Kroll’s latest annual Global Fraud and Risk Report (1). Risk specialists Kroll surveyed 1,336 senior executives from 17 countries worldwide and found 57% from companies with a turnover topping USD15 billion had experienced a “very significant” impact from such crimes, compared to 36% overall.…

London and New York-based WPP, the world’s largest advertising group, has agreed to pay USD19.2 million to resolve charges laid by the USA’s Securities & Exchange Commission that it breached the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The SEC alleged WPP allowed overseas subsidiaries to bribe clients and breach accounting controls.…

THE RULING council of the International Cocoa Organisation (ICCO) is preparing to agree major reforms to the International Cocoa Agreement, which should see the agreement increase its commitment to boost sustainability in the chocolate sector.

Council members are considering final changes committing the ICCO to ensuring that cocoa production, processing and manufacture is socially, economically and environmentally sustainable.…

Japanese paint companies have felt the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on their bottom lines over the last 18 months, although their fortunes appear to have diverged in the first half of this calendar year. Firms that have a strong presence in China, where the economy has already bounced back strongly, are faring better than those that are primarily focused on domestic sales or export markets still struggling to shake off the lingering effects of the global health crisis.…

The leader of Bangladesh’s clothing and textile industry has promised to keep encouraging this important outsourcing hub towards more innovative circular and sustainable operations, as major brands promise to deliver 100% sustainable and eco-friendly products. “In order to maintain our competitive position in the market, we must radically shift to more sustainable consumption and production, upcycling and recycling of pre- and post-consumer wastes,” said Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) president Faruque Hasan.…

AFRICA’s clothing and textile sector has been hit hard by Covid-19, with an emerging production industry being hit by falls in demand and disruption in supply chains. India-based market researchers Mordor Intelligence concluded in a report assessing the African industry’s prospects for 2021-5 that “disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic on global value chains and its impact on African businesses is already evident.”…

INTRODUCTION

TEXTILES and clothing manufacture and sales are all about leveraging resources, from creative talent to quality materials and sophisticated technology. So, enterprise resource planning programmes (ERP) have been attractive for the past 20 years or more and have become an increasingly important tool of manufacturers and brands.…

The illegal wildlife trade is one of the world’s biggest money earners for criminals and is now coming under serious attention from the international anti-money laundering community.

Advocates for curbing the illegal wildlife trade (IWT) by ‘going after the money’ have been pushing for years for the trade to be included in anti-money laundering (AML) measures.…

Mauritius’ textile and clothing manufacturing sector is expected to witness year-on-year growth of around 18.5% this year (2021) after suffering a severe Covid-19-related contraction of 28.6% in 2020. The National Accounts Estimates released by Statistics Mauritius in June (1) predict robust growth for country’s textile and apparel industry, which accounts for almost 50% of the country’s overall manufacturing.…

In five years, the Europol-hosted website ‘No More Ransom’ (NMR) (1) “prevented criminals from earning almost a billion euros through ransomware attacks,” the European Union (EU) police agency claims. Launching a new more user-friendly home for its ‘Crypto Sheriff’ app on Monday (July 26), Europol said that through 121 free tools, able to decrypt 151 ransomware families of this malware, the NMR repository has helped more than six million people recover locked files for free.…

THE EUROPEAN Commission in June (2021) signalled it was running out of patience with Malta and Cyprus over their ‘golden passport’ schemes which allow people investing in these small island nations to effectively buy citizenship. The European Union (EU) executive has long warned that such policies contain significant ML risks, releasing a detailed report in 2019 that highlighted concerns that governments failed to properly screen the source of funds used to gain golden passports.…

COVID-19 has been a challenge for many industries and the tobacco sector has been no exception, with the disease disrupting consumption and purchasing patterns that underpin profitability and turnover.

Countries where smoking is associated with socialising have been particularly vulnerable and a good example is Bangladesh, where the disease has depressed consumption, temporarily.…

India’s apparel and textile exporters are under huge pressure from their western buyers to meet contracts as the country’s devastating second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic eases. As a result, manufacturers have been flying-in workers who had returned to their home while the virus ravaged India’s cities and towns, depressing production capacity.…

Covid-19 made 2020 an incredibly disruptive year for the global manufacturing sector and Vietnam’s paint and coatings sector did not escape the pandemic impact. This was despite that this south-east Asian country had an apparently low impact from the disease, with just 9,565 cases (as of June 9, 2021) and just 55 deaths from a 98 million population, albeit with a rash of new cases last month (June).…

The narcotics trade was a prime motivator to enact global anti-money laundering regulations to curb dirty money flows. Over 30 years later, drug trafficking is still considered the largest transnational crime by international law enforcement agencies. It is worth an estimated USD344 billion-a-year, according to Interpol, followed by counterfeiting crimes (USD288 billion) and human trafficking (USD157 billion).…

INTRODUCTION

ROBOTICS are not new to the textile and clothing sector, and have driven productivity improvements for more than a decade. But these technologies are becoming increasingly more adaptable and more autonomous, offering the many stages in the textile and clothing and distribution chain the potential to increase margin.…

New regulatory plastic waste obligations coming into force in July (this year) will force tobacco producers selling into the European Union’s (EU) 447-million-person market to take measures to reduce butt littering. The move, part of the EU’s Single Use Plastics Directive (SUPD) (Directive (EU) 2019/904), are designed to reduce the 4.5 trillion cigarette butts that end up as litter annually worldwide (according to the UN), generating 845,000 tonnes of waste, according to a New York (USA) state document.…

Indian labour law reforms that had been scheduled for implementation in April, have been delayed and according to several experts, they are not now expected to be enforced before October.

“There was no official communication for a long time and therefore it looked like as if the codes were dead,” Saurabh Munjal, legal advisor to Apparel Export Promotion Council told just-style, “but last week the government has come out with two new notifications, which means that they are still working on it.”…

The ability of India’s clothing industry to serve overseas buyers has been devastated by the country’s ongoing second Covid-19 wave, with a collapse in domestic orders, labour fleeing urban areas and disrupted upstream supplies slashing industry capacity.

Indeed, according to a survey by Clothing Manufacturers Association of India (CMAI) released on May 7, industry-wide production has fallen to a quarter of normal levels: “Uncertainty is looming large,” said the association, which passed the survey results to just-style.…

Lie detection is an emerging science, with technology being developed to help companies and law enforcement seek to detect fraudsters and other criminals. Artificial intelligence is a potential key development in enabling machines to screen subjects physical and audible response to questions to detect lies.…

INTRODUCTION

The textile industry is one of the world’s oldest manufacturing sector, yet it is also one of the most dynamic, constantly reinventing itself. Today, the development of micro-factories might herald root-and-branch change in how the textile and clothing industry operates, a transformation driven by advances in digital textile printing.…

Apparel and footwear brands, especially those in the United States, may come under increasing distribution strain as an uptick in Covid-19 cases in the Chinese clothing and textile manufacturing hub of Guangdong exacerbates already fraught global logistics.  The southern Chinese province recorded 135 total infections over the period June 10–23 and a seven-day average of nine new cases as of June 23, according to data from the USA’s Johns Hopkins University.…

When the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded in the first half of 2020, China’s textile industry quickly increased its nonwoven-based supply capacity of protective masks, medical protective clothing, isolation clothing and other emergency prevention and control materials.

Data compiled by the China National Textile and Apparel Council show that the country’s output of nonwoven products recorded a robust year-on-year growth of 14.4% in in the first eleven months of 2020.…

If the international food industry wanted to look for a national market segment that is growing fast and offers real sales volumes, it would do well to examine the Indian cheese market. Sales are projected to reach USD1.7 billion by 2024, according to by India-based market researcher IMARC, being predicted to increase 25% annually from a base of USD430 million in 2018 – see ‘Cheese Market in India: Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2019-2024’ (1).…

THE INDIAN clothing and textile manufacturing sector is facing renewed disruption as India is hit by a brutal second wave of Covid-19.

“Labour has [partially] gone, production is down and demand is falling,” Sanjay Arora, business director at consultancy firm Wazir Advisors told just-style.…

THE MYANMAR clothing industry is struggling to operate effectively as political unrest continues following the seizure of power by the country’s military on February 1.

Garment manufacturers, most of whom have been located in the country’s commercial capital Yangon, had been a major employer and a significant source of foreign currency for Myanmar.…

THE WIDE diversity of AML laws worldwide can complicate the enforcement of AML/CFT extradition proceedings.

Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations 37 and 39 say that governments should be prepared to extradite money launderers (and terrorist financiers) to another country if they both criminalise the underlying predicate offence.…

Demand for knitting machines in China has been recovering remarkably fast from the Covid-19 crisis, with Chinese textile factory owners growing bolder in investment decisions, and exports to south Asia growing too.

Chinese knitting machine-makers Suzhou ReHow Machinery Manufacturing and Fujian Taifan Industrial, which supply mainly T-shirt fabrics single jersey circular knitting machines, saw their sales dip in 2020 but not to a dramatically low level.…

THE MYANMAR clothing industry is struggling to operate effectively as political unrest continues following the seizure of power by the country’s military on February 1.

Garment manufacturers, most of whom have been located in the country’s commercial capital Yangon, had been a major employer and a significant source of foreign currency for Myanmar.…

Covid-19 has reshaped commercial crime, and one lucrative offence taking a real turn for the worse is tobacco smuggling and counterfeiting. Keith Nuthall reports.

The Covid-19 pandemic has depressed incomes worldwide and forced lower income smokers to look for cheap smokes, which has included counterfeits or smuggled goods.…

There is no doubt that the Covid-19 pandemic has fuelled the black-market trade in illicit and smuggled licit tobacco products. The disease has depressed income and forced lower income smokers to look for cheap smokes, which has included counterfeits or smuggled goods.…

The suspension of orders by clothing brands because of Covid-19 has not just been a problem for apparel manufacturers – the suppliers of these companies, including textile manufacturers, weavers, finishers, yarn producers and even fibre makers, have all suffered. With work drying up for manufacturers, upstream suppliers have lost orders.…

The development of trusted digital identity systems, now being rolled out internationally, will strengthen anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing (AML/CTF) controls, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and AML technology vendors have argued.

Global AML body FATF is encouraging AML/CFT authorities to consider using regulatory ‘sandboxes’ to test how digital ID systems might interact with national AML/CFT laws and regulations.…

Environmental regulation is becoming increasingly tight for textile companies and this of special concern for the higher-tech side of the industry where new fibres, chemicals and processes are delivering a cutting edge. This is especially the case for innovative segments such as performance and outdoor materials.…

INTRODUCTION

NEW technology can deliver effective maintenance strategies to clothing and textile manufacturers, helping them go beyond reactive and proactive maintenance, moving into the more sophisticated world of prediction. The goal is to deliver an optimum maintenance strategy that enables manufacturers to get the most value out of their plant and equipment by spending the least amount of time, resources and money to deliver effective performance.…

The Lahore-based Sapphire Group has been blazing a good practice example to Pakistan’s fabric manufacturing sector by focusing on innovation when many local competitors have failed to update their production practice and technology.

With an annual turnover of USD800 million and an asset base exceeding USD500 million, the Sapphire Group has been optimising its productivity though careful attention process timing targets.…

INTRODUCTION

Accounting software is crucial for any company wanting to expand on a sustainable basis, adding diversity in supply and customer relationships as they grow. The clothing and textile industry is particularly complex regarding its inputs and outputs. Production is also complex when manufacturers handle spinning, weaving, cutting and finishing.…

With global markets and daily consumer habits being disrupted for almost a year due to the ongoing global Covid-19 pandemic, some oils and fats sales have grown – and a key example is soybean oil. This is true worldwide, from North and South America, to Africa, Asia, and Europe.…

SINGLE use plastics bans being brought in across the world may not cover all nonwovens products, but they certainly are having an impact on the industry as it parses often complex rules coming into force.

A key piece of legislation is the European Union’s (EU) so-called ‘single use plastics directive’ (1) which has deadlines passing in 2021.…

Already described by its proponents as a “wonder material” with numerous applications across the nonwovens sector, researchers now believe that graphene can play a “critical” role in the defeat of the coronavirus pandemic.

From advanced personal protection equipment (PPE) to air and water filtration systems, nonwovens manufacturers around the world have capitalised on this carbon-based material’s anti-viral capabilities to boost their product ranges.…

In 2021, when the UK has thrown away its most precious diplomatic asset, its membership of the European Union, for dubious democratic gains, burning major European civil rights enjoyed by Britons and causing likely economic long-term damage, it is maybe time to recall when Britain followed more enlightened international policies.…

In 2021, when the UK has thrown away its most precious diplomatic asset, its membership of the European Union, for dubious democratic gains, burning major European civil rights enjoyed by Britons and causing likely economic long-term damage, it is maybe time to recall when Britain followed more enlightened international policies.…

Brief:

This article provides an analysis of why the world’s largest regional trade deal (in population terms) – the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – was signed last November (2020). It assesses China’s role in this important political and economic event, and how it reflects its relations with other signatory countries.…

In India, the increased demand for branded food products and workplace restrictions on industrial labour caused by Covid-19 has inspired automation among food manufacturers. This investment is expected to standardise and increase the quality of products well into the future, well beyond the end of the pandemic.…

The paint and coatings industry in Indonesia still has ample room for growth amid booming infrastructure development, although it has had to struggle with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, say officials and industry experts. 

With the property sector being the primary growth driver Indonesian paint and coating sales, the high demand for new housing and the repainting cycle assures the steady demand for paint and coating products, said Mahendra Chahar, senior consultant at Frost & Sullivan.…

The paint and coatings industry in Indonesia still has ample room for growth amid booming infrastructure development, although it has had to struggle with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, say officials and industry experts. 

With the property sector being the primary growth driver Indonesian paint and coating sales, the high demand for new housing and the repainting cycle assures the steady demand for paint and coating products, said Mahendra Chahar, senior consultant at Frost & Sullivan.…

REGULATIONS affecting what information can, should and cannot be placed on personal care product packaging are among the most demanding of compliance issues facing beauty manufacturers.

One reason is that this is both a very international field and a dynamic one – rules change all the time and vary widely from market to market.…

In the modern textile industry, coating, surface modification and laminating are the key means to tailor textiles and nonwovens to create functional products for specific, often high-performance, applications.

Such techniques have offered the sector potential advantages as it entered uncharted terrain in 2020, being at the forefront in humankind’s fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.…

THE ONSET of Covid-19 has caused many fraud problems, but a particular difficulty has been fraudsters exploiting the unprecedented government largesse released designed to prevent economic collapse at the hands of the pandemic. In the UK, for instance, the House of Commons public accounts committee issued a report in October (2020), saying that Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) had reported 8,000 allegations from employees that their employers – supposed to pay a lower level of wages to staff to receive furlough payments under the UK Job Retention Scheme – had not actually made these payments, or paid less than they should.…

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic sparked predictions that the shift of textile industrial capacity from China to lower cost neighbouring countries could intensify, but analysts talking to Twist International say the trend may have stalled in the past year. While production capacity of China’s textile industry has indeed in recent years shifted to south and southeast Asia, some of these transfers have not run smoothly.…

Eric Dorchies was appointed Mauritius’ Ciel Textile Ltd’s CEO last July (2020) at a moment when his country’s important clothing and textile sector was struggling hard against the impact of the Covid-19. It has not been an easy start to his job (he was previously the company’s COO) given the risk of the third wave of the virus hitting Europe, the company’s main market.…

The size of India’s biscuit and cookie market, valued at USD4.7 billion in 2019 by GlobalData, registered a sudden expansion during the Covid-19 related lockdown, due to a sharp increase in at-home consumption. The industry is growing at a rate of 9.7% annually, according to figures released by GlobalData, with sales moving towards healthier premium categories, such as low sugar digestive biscuits.…

The size of India’s biscuit and cookie market, valued at USD4.7 billion in 2019 by GlobalData, registered a sudden expansion during the Covid-19 related lockdown, due to a sharp increase in at-home consumption. The industry is growing at a rate of 9.7% annually, according to figures released by GlobalData, with sales moving towards healthier premium categories, such as low sugar digestive biscuits.…

The Gulf kingdom of Bahrain is kicking off 2021 with the grand opening of its new airport passenger terminal, a 210,000 square metre (sqm) building that is four times the size of the existing facility. Following its official opening on January 28, the terminal will be capable of processing 130,000 air traffic movements a year, up from 95,500 in 2019, and will have a handling capacity of 4,700 bags an hour. …

BRITISH and European Union (EU) confectioners must take care to ensure their products meet new origin rules if they want them covered by the duty free goods provisions of the new EU/UK trade agreement struck on Christmas Eve.

The 1,256-page deal includes complex and comprehensive origin rules, such as for chocolate, which can be deemed made in the EU and Britain if all dairy, eggs and honey used are sourced locally, as well as at least 40% of grains, malt, starches and wheat, (which must also not exceed 30% of costs).…

NEW integrated paint manufacturing units in India with an annual production capacity of less than Indian Rupees INR500 million (USD6.6 million) will soon be exempt from securing prior environment clearance by the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF). This rule, covering plants with production facilities for resins and pigments, is expected to come into force early next year (2021) once the central government formalises and gazettes a new Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification.…

A new Transparency International (TI) survey has reported significant concern in 17 Asian countries (1) that corruption continues to be a problem or is getting worse, undermining equitable access to public services and trust in government. TI’s ‘Global Corruption Barometer – Asia’ (2) found 74% of the 20,000 people surveyed believe that government corruption is a major problem in their country, with 19% of citizens surveyed admitting to paying a bribe and 22% using personal connections when accessing public services in the previous year.…

INDIAN garment exporters with manufacturing units based in the war-ravaged Tigray region of Ethiopia are hoping for an early revival of operations and in the interim say they are finding alternate production centres to honour their supply commitments.

“We are making the products [that were to be supplied from Ethiopian] in our Indian factories,” Arul Saravanan, chief marketing officer of SCM Garments Pvt Ltd, in Tirupur, south India, told just-style.…

The international gold trade is worth over USD6 trillion a year, according to the World Gold Council (WGC), but oversight of the supply chain is considered weak by many critics, relying on self-regulation, making it vulnerable to money laundering.

Gold remains scarce and hence valuable: from antiquity until 2019, just 197,576 tonnes has been mined – equivalent to a 21.7 metre cube, according to the World Gold Council.…

JUST when Sri Lanka was about to kickstart post-Covid-19 recovery of its critically important clothing sector, having managed the pandemic’s first wave with only 13 deaths, these plans have been sidelined by a deadly second wave of infections. And worse, cases have broken out among garment factory workers nationwide. …

THE INTERNATIONAL trade in paint and coatings products and ingredients contains significant variations in prices that some experts warn maybe too good to be true and could indicate that certain trade flows are being exploited by money launderers.

Such criminals seeking to move illicit proceeds from one country to another through artificial pricing – deliberate over- and under- invoicing.…

The Amílcar Cabral University, the only public university in Guinea-Bissau, one of the world’s poorest and politically fragile countries, is looking to expand its educational services and attract more funds, trying to overturn past student dissatisfaction with its work.

After nine years leaning on a public–private partnership with the Lisbon, Portugal-based Lusófona University, the UAC (Universidade Amílcar Cabral in its Portuguese acronym), ended in 2013 after the government jeopardised the agreement.…

ACCA members Danish Sange and Amina Rafi reveal how their marriage has accelerated their professional growth and advanced their careers.

It is tough to separate work and home when you are married to someone with a similar profession.

But setting these boundaries has helped Danish Sange, manager at PwC Middle East, and his wife Amina Rafi, audit senior at Deloitte Middle East, make the most of their relationship.…

The Covid-19 pandemic is set to drive a near threefold surge in the antiviral coatings market as researchers and developers say they now realise how little they know about effective materials combatting such threats.

The search for more universal antiviral materials “should be continued with even higher intensity”, said Professors Ken Ostrikov and Ziqi Sun from Queensland University of Technology, in Australia, in their September (2020) report, ‘Future antiviral surfaces: Lessons from COVID-19 pandemic’, featured in the publication ‘Sustainable Materials and Technologies’.…

AUSTRALIA’S digital textile finishing market is small and therefore challenging compared to markets in Asia, Europe or the US. Australian fashion and fabric manufacturers usually outsource finishing to partners in Asia, notably in China or India, but use local digital print companies for smaller runs and sampling, said Romeo Sanuri, general manager Next Printing, which offers digital printing services to textile customers from Sydney.…

THE EUROPEAN Commission is moving ahead with its plans to replace the European Union’s (EU) long-standing system of anti-money laundering directives – which give member states some flexibility over implementation – with a compulsory AML regulation. This will be directly applicable in all member states and must be followed to the letter.…

AMUL

The owner of India’s popular Amul dairy brand, will invest Indian Rupees INR10 billion (USD136 million) over the next two years in new dairy plants and bakeries, indicating optimism about Indian post-Covid 19 food markets. Rupinder Singh Sodhi, managing director of Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), (which registered sales of USD7 billion in the financial year ending March 2020), told just-food that throughout the pandemic, the company’s sales have been growing consistently.…

Countries exporting the most goods and services are also the worst at foreign bribery enforcement, according to the latest report from anti-graft group Transparency International. ‘Exporting Corruption Progress Report 2020: Assessing Enforcement of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention’ finds that most countries assessed (34 out of 47), conducted weak or no enforcement of their foreign bribery laws, in part hindered by a lack of public information on beneficial ownership. …

CHEMICAL-based industries such as textile dyeing and finishing need to take care that trades involving products they make, have sold or are bought, are not being abused by money launderers to transfer the value of illicit proceeds across the world.

That is the message of the owner and operator of a specialist database that tracks the risk of products of any kind being exported and imported for the purposes of trade-based money laundering (TBML).…

THE CHINA Coatings Industry Association on September 14 published a draft standard for the manufacture and sale of antibacterial and anti-viral coatings – a key growth segment during the Covid-19 pandemic. The draft specifies the terms, definitions, requirements, test methods, inspection rules, labelling, marking, packaging and storage of coating products with antibacterial and antiviral properties.…

From sustainability to flammability, anti-viral protection to anti-corrosion, the potential applications of nanocoatings in the aerospace industry are “nearly endless,” say researchers who have noticed a sharp uptick in their use. This is particularly in relation to space missions and technologies.…

A WORLD Trade Organisation (WTO) disputes panel will assess whether import restrictions created by the European Union (EU) to reduce the use of carbon-intensive biofuels comply with global trading rules.

The Indonesian government is challenging portions of the EU’s renewable energy directive (RED) linked to EU guidance limiting the indirect land use change (ILUC) of biofuel feedstock cultivation.…

Switzerland may be a small country of 8.5 million people, with an area of 41,285 km², 60% of which is mountainous, but its paint and varnish industry is substantial and growing, despite the Covid-19 pandemic. Of course, it helps that Switzerland is rich.…

Cigarette sales could be boosted by the growing challenges faced by vaping products, according to senior figures from the industry speaking to TJI. Certainly, the days when vaping products received a relatively clear pass in marketing restrictions are over in some jurisdictions.…

Textile industry innovators are seeking to create and improve naturally coloured cotton, that can reduce or even remove the need for manufacturers to add dyes that can be expensive and generate significant levels of pollution.

Natural coloured cotton is not new, with Liv Severino, head of Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (Embrapa), the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, a state-owned research corporation affiliated with Brazil’s ministry of agriculture, livestock and food supply, noting evidence that human clothes were made from such fibres in the Andes 5,000 years ago.…

Growing Asian dairy markets are increasingly regulating the health claims that could be made on packs of food, a trend that is impacting international dairy exporters from Europe as much as local dairy producers.

A key example is Taiwan, that will in 2022 forbid the word ‘healthy’ on food items except foods that have received special health food permits.…

TEXT fraud is maybe more dangerous that email fraud, given the tendency for mobile phone users to respond to texts swiftly and without careful thought, cyber-security experts warn.

The Covid-19 pandemic has also created opportunities for fraudsters using texts and messaging services such as WhatsApp to launch fishing and other attacks on the unwary.…

The cutting edge IT field of quantum computing is developing across Africa, with South Africa considered the hub, in part through an IBM centre in Johannesburg that enables academics throughout the continent to freely access its quantum computer network, based in the USA, through the cloud.…

VIETNAM clothing industry insiders have told just-style that they are optimistic that the Vietnamese apparel supply chain will emerge strengthened from the Covid-19 crisis in 2021. This is despite an ongoing shortage of orders during 2020, only partly mitigated by switching production to make masks.…

A NEW draft regulation released by the Indian government that would ban packaging in India containing non-dairy products like soya milk or coconut milk from being labelled as ‘milk’ has been welcomed by the dairy industry but opposed by plant-based milk companies.…

Indian apparel exporters continue to face severe labour shortages, limiting the orders they can accept and undermining the quality of their work, even as the country’s five months-long Covid-19 related lockdown has largely been lifted. This scarcity of trained and experienced labour is coming at a bad time for Indian manufacturers who have an opportunity to snatch business from Chinese competitors as western buyers seek to diversify supply chains during the pandemic.…

The China National Coatings Industry Association (NCIA) on July 31 informed members that it has been told by the ministry of ecology and environment to investigate the production, treatment and disposal of hazardous waste in the coating industry and compile a management guide based on the investigation’s findings.…

PAKISTAN’S paint and coatings sector is understandably suffering from Covid-19, which has hit the country hard with 276,288 cases and 5,892 deaths as of July 28. But the industry has been expanding and its executives hope for a sustained recovery once the pandemic has abated, ending the current series of rolling smart lockdowns targeting infection hotspots.…

Taking up a new job where you are responsible for overseeing how a business operates in three countries during a global health pandemic is not a task many financial professionals would take on lightly. But that is what Busola Doregos, a Nigerian accountant working in Uganda has just done. …

The executive director of International Sugar Organisation (ISO) wants his body “to work more with the confectionery sector”, as it strives to debunk junk science that derides the nutritional value of sugar. José Orive told Confectionery Production that ISO wanted to succeed in presenting “scientific evidence-based information” about sugar’s health impact so the reputation of confectionery products is not “blackened with funky fake data”. …

All five countries are also developed economies, whose consumers have money to keep their personal care product traders afloat.

According to Finland-based Global Research & Data Services, sales of personal care products in Norway’s 5.3 million people market last year (2019) were worth USD700 million, based on UN data.…

As the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) prepares to review India’s compliance with its AML/CFT recommendations during 2021, government authorities in New Delhi are confident of a positive resulting mutual evaluation report (MER).

According to Pawan Singh Tomar, former Principal Commissioner of Income Tax at India’s Income Tax Department, government official claims are not based on hubris.…

ITALY’s paint industry is hopeful that the end of the country’s Covid-19 lockdown will herald a surge in business, interrupted by the pandemic. Gianni Martinetti, president of the Paints and Varnishes Group of AVISA, the adhesives and sealants, paints and varnishes and inks division of national chemicals industry association, Federchimica said: “The hope is that, after two very hard months of lockdown, we can start again with the same liveliness that was found in the first quarter of 2020.”…

THE ASIA-Pacific region, even one-party states such as China, have developed legal protections for whistleblowers, although the comprehensive protection more commonly found in Europe is still usually absent.

South Korea is one jurisdiction leading the pack on developing robust whistleblower protections.…

Indian packaged food manufacturers are increasingly relying upon online purchased home delivery of their products to compensate for falling demand in physical store retail because of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions imposed since March 24.

Instead, some major food manufacturers have built up home delivery network and boosted online purchases, in many cases through third party ecommerce platforms, but also developing their own delivery networks.…

The Indian  knitwear industry, a sector that exported USD7.5 billion’s worth of apparel in the financial year ending March 2020, according to the country’s directorate general of foreign trade, is undergoing severe stress induced by the Covid-19 related lockdown and resulting collapsing demand.…

THE ASIA nonwovens sector has been reaping the benefits of booming demand for protective medical materials during the Covid-19 crisis. But like the pandemic, this roaring demand will end, and nonwovens producers need to ready to a post-Covid-19 market.

This will mean reining in growth, but as David Price, founding partner of US-based management consultancy specialising in nonwovens Price Hanna Consultants, said, with regional nonwovens sales per person still low in global terms, the “market penetration for disposable and durable nonwovens in southeast Asia and China” is likely to grow regardless.…

THE NORDIC region’s beauty market has, like every other country, been hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the stability of societies in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland has meant that their retail sectors have avoided some of the chaos linked to the health emergency that that has harmed other markets.…

If there is one subsector of technical textiles that is regarded as well suited to environment-friendly materials innovation, it is surely the agricultural textile (ag-tex) sector. This is indeed the case, with research and development specialists creating clever solutions allying the functional and sustainability benefits of ag-tex with new biodegradable and naturally-sourced fibre.…

THE NEED to actively recharge electric vehicles makes them less attractive to consumers, especially when batteries can take eight hours to charge. So, the development of ambient technologies that enable EVs to charge themselves as they operate has been a key focus of automotive R&D.…

TEXTILE and fibre innovators worldwide are seeking to tap growing demand for antimicrobial, virus and bacteria killing fibres and fabrics generated by the Covid-19 pandemic, encouraging clothing and fabric-makers to develop groundbreaking new technology.

Indeed, for companies such as HeiQ Materials AG – a Switzerland based textile innovation specialist – the pandemic has “opened a whole new chapter for the development of antimicrobial surfaces and textiles”, its co-founder and CEO Carlo Centonze told just-style.…

Export-oriented Indian garment manufacturers emerging from lockdown are struggling to meet their new export order delivery schedule due to severe labour shortages caused by continuing migration of workers to their families’ traditional village homes. These problems have persisted, despite the government on June 1 lifting the Covid-19 related lockdown that had prevented factories operating without special permission.…

Indian apparel exporters are fearing missed deadlines, with key inputs from China having either been stuck at Indian customs for the past 10 days or not been shipped at all, following military tensions between the two neighbours.

“One or our [export] shipment has to leave in 10 days but its accessories [from China] are stuck at the Mumbai port,” Rajesh Malhotra, director, IR Accessories (part of IR Apparel & Accessories), in Gurgaon, near New Delhi, told just-style.…

MAJOR European food and drink industry associations have asked the European Union (EU) and Britain to consider agreeing a temporary holding Brexit deal, preserving EU/UK free trade, once the current transitional period involving the UK follows EU rules, expires on December 31.…

AS a key part of the food production supply chain, the international can manufacturing and filling industry has largely stayed open, with some exceptions, during the Covid-19 crisis, not just in developed economies, but also in key emerging markets such as the BRICS countries.…

EAST Asia’s auto-making hubs may have been making a better fist of dealing with the Covid-19 crisis than manufacturing centres in Europe and north America, but the pandemic has been harming the industry in the region.

Government responses have varied, however, with no major scrappage packages being announced.…

AUSTRALIA’S existing regulatory framework for importing and manufacturing industrial chemicals, the National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme (NICNAS) will be replaced by a new system called the Australian Industrial Chemicals Introduction Scheme (AICIS), starting July 1. The AICIS covers a broad range of chemicals and polymers used in adhesives, paints and solvents among many others. …

With spring/summer now a write-off for most retailers, creating excess inventory levels, Richard Hyman, an independent UK-based retail analyst, said that the excess stock flooding the market, and the subsequent discounting and margin erosion, will lead to widespread administrations for clothing brands in the UK, Europe and the US, to varying degrees.…

AN INDIAN clothing supplier to international brands has told just-style of the challenges it faces as it starts to emerge from the near complete lockdown that prevented work being completed on summer collections. On May 4, several state governments allowed local clothing manufacturers to restart work until May 17, when fresh guidance is anticipated from the central government and states.…

USE of the so-called ‘wonder material’ graphene in the energy sector is growing fast, with its thin sheets of carbon atoms in a honeycomb shape, stronger than diamond yet flexible, offering excellent thermal and electronic conductive properties. Given it also offers an extremely high surface to material ratio, graphene energy storage and capture uses are being developed to make batteries, supercapacitors, and solar panels.…

AUSTRALIAN wool producers are stockpiling wool and avoiding auction sales with Covid-19 hitting their key market, China. The Australian wool industry is important. It delivered exports worth Australian dollars AUD4.15 billion (USD2.6 billion) in 2018-19, according to Australian government figures – https://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/research-topics/agricultural-commodities/agricultural-commodities-trade-data#2019.…

Paint and coating manufacturers and retailers in North Africa have been struggling with the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus, just as have their counterparts in other regions, however some markets and industries in the region seem better placed to cope with the pandemic’s economic impact than others.…

WANT to check the dark web for illicit services? Search engines accessible from the public web offer links to the dark web. One example is Finland-based Ahmia (https://ahmia.fi/), which yields interesting results from searches such as https://ahmia.fi/search/?q=hacking. A more recent variant that has attracted attention from the IT security press is Kilos – http://dnmugu4755642434.onion…

GERMANY’S strong paint and coatings industry is facing a significant loss in sales because of the global Covid-19 pandemic – Germany expects a fall in economic output of up to 20% in 2020. Industry experts expect that the country’s coatings and paint industry will suffer accordingly.…

India’s packaged food industry has been hit hard by the 21-day national lockdown announced by the government on March 25 (last Wednesday) to control the spread of Covid-19 infections. Despite being formally exempted from the lockdown, most Indian food factories remain closed, with their supply chains having been disrupted and distribution effectively suspended nationwide.…

The Indian packaged food industry is hoping to restart a significant number of operations this week, saying state and municipal governments are increasingly willing to approve exemptions for the sector and support services from a general nationwide Covid-19 lockdown on manufacturing and trade, currently in place until May 3.…

India’s large-scale dairy industry is reorienting procurement and processing towards making solid dairy products, taking advantage of the supply chain and demand disruptions caused by the 21-day national lockdown from March 25 imposed by the government to control the spread of Covid-19.…

ANTI-money laundering authorities in Nepal hope an upcoming 2020-21 review by the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) will conclude this Himalayan state is at least largely compliant with all FATF recommendations and special recommendations, although experts admit the review will be tough.…

Italy’s textile sector is running at reduced capacity due to the tougher health protocols that have been put in place to protect workers from Covid-19 contamination, the president of Confindustria Toscana Nord, Andrea Cavicchi, told WTiN.com.

All textiles mills in manufacturing centre Prato were operational following the March 12 decree, which shuttered until March 25 much commercial activity across the country, including clothing stores, allowing manufacturing activities to continue only if companies respected stricter health protocols aimed at mitigating the spread of the infectious disease.…

GIVEN the hundreds of billions of dollars spent by banks on fighting money laundering, fears that trade-based money laundering (TBML) remains widespread, as stressed by FATF, the APG (http://www.fatf-gafi.org/publications/methodsandtrends/documents/trade-basedmoneylaunderingtypologies.html), and most recently, the European Commission (https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/supranational_risk_assessment_of_the_money_laundering_and_terrorist_financing_risks_affecting_the_union_-_annex.pdf), are of serous concern. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) said that in 2018, global merchandise exports were worth USD19.48 trillion, so there is plenty of place for laundered money to hide.…

• 1MDB SCANDAL IN MALAYSIA SEES USD BILLIONS STOLEN AND HIDDEN

Malaysia 1MDB scandal is one of the largest money laundering cases ever, worldwide, with Malaysian courts considering charges over how at least USD4.5 billion was stolen and then spent or laundered from Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad by former Prime Minister Najib Razak and his associates.…

ANTI-money laundering authorities in Nepal hope an upcoming 2020-21 review by the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) will conclude this Himalayan state is at least largely compliant with all FATF recommendations and special recommendations, although experts admit the review will be tough.…

THE LOCKDOWN of three weeks ordered by the Indian government from Wednesday (March 25) to contain the spread of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 has had a limited impact on apparel exporting units, say many Indian manufacturers, who have said production was already largely halted by a wave of cancellations in orders.…

India’s nonwoven technical textile industry has been at the centre of two successive public heath emergencies – first ramping up production of air purifier filters to combat dangerous levels of winter air pollution and now increasing the output of materials needed to make face masks to fight the Coronavirus outbreak.…

THE CLOTHING and textile industry and government officials within the Indian Ocean archipelago nation of Mauritius, say they are hopeful that a trade deal will be struck with India this year and that it will help build sales and capacity in this important African outsourcing hub.…

ROMANIA’S clothing and textile industry is facing a recruitment crunch and experts worry that it will struggle to find a strategy to ensure it can hire sustainably to ensure long-term growth. A survey from PwC’s HR benchmarking project Saratoga released last October (2019) concluded that Romania faces an “acute shortage of workforce”, needing about one million extra workers to sustain a 3.5% economic growth by 2023.…

NEW fraud detection solutions based on a “centralised management platform across all lines of business” are being made more feasible by new financial industry customer authentication standards, research indicates. These allow a consortia of organisations’ data (or data from previously siloed wings of one major institution) to be pooled, allowing bulk analysis of big data, helping update algorithms, encouraging anti-fraud system vendors to offer cross-functional services as clients seek to consolidate contracts and end silo-based approaches to counter-fraud activities, industry insiders predict.…

AS online food sales boom to aid self-isolation during the Covid-19 outbreak, the risks of counterfeiting and piracy within the food and drink sectors will become more evident. This comes as regulators are mulling tougher action to fight this commercial crime.…

THE TREND towards consumers buying confectionery made with natural ingredients is gathering pace, with research from Germany-based international food ingredients-maker Döhler saying that worldwide more than 50% of confectionery consumers now want a “healthier” product and more than 60% “value natural ingredients”.…

European aluminium cansheet and foilsheet rolling factories say they are trying hard to adapt to production under strict Covid-19 controls imposed by their national governments to satisfy the growing need for foodstuffs across Europe that are safe and have a long shelf life.…

Indonesia’s industry ministry launched an initiative in February (2020) aimed at eliminating lead used in paint made and sold in the country. It involves the Indonesian paint industry, is part of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) project and is funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), an international investment body.…

THE AIRPORT serving India’s capital, New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI), has been under pressure from a boom in passenger traffic, and so is being expanded and revamped in a project that will cost USD1.3 billion, according to Indian aviation industry sources.…

THE USE of paint and coatings by airlines is far more than the choice of an elegant trip for tail fins and fuselages. High tech coatings help aircraft operate efficiently and play an increasingly important role in helping planes fly smoothly, reducing drag and hence carbon emissions.…

PAKISTAN’S textile sector is in dire need of additional investment for modernisation and innovation in order to keep pace with its main regional competitors, industry insiders have warned.

They claim investment has been slashed in the past five years and the industry has been hit with high import tariffs on raw materials meaning programmes to upgrade machinery and other innovation projects have only continued at a sluggish rate.…

Global production of fibreglass is predicted to soar over the coming decade, as appreciation grows of its utility and cost effectiveness in expanding materials manufacturing sectors.

Driven by a push to increase reliance on renewable energy sources to help tackle the climate crisis, manufacturers of wind turbines are increasingly reliant on glass – and carbon – fibres to produce rotor blades, for instance.…

A joint venture between Turkey’s Kıvanç Tekstil and India’s Reliance Industries involves the Turkish textile manufacturer producing textiles from supplies of 2,500 tonnes of recycled polyester feedstock received every year. Through an agreement inked in July 2019, Kıvanç Tekstil can manufacture and market Reliance’s R|ElanTM GreenGold fabrics under licence.…

Global viscose giant, Aditya Birla Group, that opened its Spring Summer 2021 collection at the Première Vision show in Paris from February 11 to 13, is experimenting with apparel rather than fashion stories this year to showcase the versatility, sustainability and longevity of its fibres.…

Kenya will start to grow genetically modified cotton this year, becoming the first country to do so in Eastern Africa. The move is significant as it is likely to inspire other counties in the region start to grow Bt cotton hybrids that are resistant to African bollworm and other pests.…

AS the afternoon heat ebbs in the middle of this Indian summer, a police team block a major highway outside the city of Nashik, in the western state of Maharashtra, rolling in wheeled yellow-coloured barricades. Soon a traffic jam builds up and policemen move from one car to another in search for cash, often hidden in door cavities or spare wheels.With…

There is broad consensus among energy and environmental experts that carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems built at commercial scale must play a key role if governments are to achieve their 2015 COP21 (Paris Agreement) ambitions for limiting carbon emissions. “All credible scenario modelling shows that CCS will be essential to meeting the targets set by the Paris Agreement”, commented a report co-ordinated by the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP) for a European Gas Regulatory Forum meeting, staged last June (2019).…

PORTUGAL’S digital textile printing sector generates sales of USD164 million annually (as of 2019), according to analysists BlueWeave Consulting & Research Pvt Ltd, which predicts it is poised to grow, benefiting from its close proximity to European customers, at a time when Europe’s market for digitally printed textiles is booming, with the technology in increasing high regard.…

THE GERMAN personal care products market turned out to be an “element of stability” in an otherwise sluggish economy in 2019, according to the country’s cosmetics industry association Industrieverband Köperpflege- und Waschmittel (IKW). German consumers spent EUR14.04 billion (USD15.55 billion) on personal care products, including shampoo and decorative cosmetics in the past year, 1.8% more than in 2018.…

CONSULTATIONS are being assessed in Australia to develop a National Standard for Environmental Risk Management of Industrial Chemicals, which will include coatings and their chemical ingredients, Australia’s department of agriculture, water and the environment has said in a note. The national standard, for which consultations were to end in February, is being designed to ensure that potentially harmful high-risk chemicals are subject to appropriate and consistent environmental controls across the nation.…

IN a bid to modernise Cambodia’s textile and garment sectors through digitalisation, the industry is introducing innovative new software next month (February) that will help improve efficiency by improving fabric handling and cutting down repeat clothing defects by almost half – in addition to making overall gains on factory productivity.…

WITH Britain’s formal exit from the European Union (EU) happening tomorrow (January 31), the UK’s main automotive industry association has called on the government to make sure that it strikes an effective trade deal with the EU by the end of a transitional period that ends on December 31 (2020).…

Sustainability issues are currently dominating the US paint and coatings industry with challenges and opportunities arising from stringent regulations and growing green markets, generating demand for environment-friendly business practices and sustainable consumer lifestyles. This change comes as the industry hopes for a fillip from the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), reforming North American trading arrangements, which has been hailed by the American Coatings Association (ACA) as “a win for America’s paint industry”.…

THE SAUDI Arabian paint industry’s output grew comparatively slowly in 2019 according to some market data but is expected to experience more robust growth over the next few years as the government invests heavily in new development projects and infrastructure. India-based market researcher Mordor Intelligence said that the Saudi Arabia paints and coatings market generated USD1.164 billion in sales last year (2019), up from USD 1.142 billion in 2018 and USD1.120 in 2017.…

From smartphones to space satellites, applications for conductive adhesives (transferring heat, electricity or both) are expanding rapidly and their innovative use and market size show little size of abating as new avenues reveal themselves through growth in sales and R&D programmes.…

Indian clothing and textile manufacturers have welcomed a series of policy changes announced in the central government’s national budget that was released on Saturday (February 1). Reforms highlighted by industry representatives include abolition of anti-dumping duty on key polyester raw material PTA (purified terephthalic acid), cheaper loans to small manufacturing units and exporters, a USD200 million investment into developing India’s technical textile industry and a review of principles underpinning future negotiations on free trade agreements (FTA), responding mainly to concerns about cheap imports from Bangladesh.…

Airbus is to pay out EUR3.6 billion (USD4 billion) under a trio of deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) with British, French and United States authorities that were simultaneously agreed by national courts January 31 as part of a global resolution over bribes to clinch civil and military aircraft sales.…

WITH Middle East dairy sales expanding steadily, dairy suppliers from around the world are targeting its consumers, hoping to gain a foothold in an increasingly diverse marketplace that is often open to innovation.

Dairy Industries International attended the 4th Global Dairy Innovation Congress MENA 2020, held in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), from January 20-21, where participants were encouraged by sales projections as from market researcher Euromonitor International that the Middle East (and Africa) dairy market should expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 3% between 2019 and 2023.…

ITALY’S cosmetic and personal care product market remained strong through 2019, with major players in the industry focused on strengthening digital retail and production strategies to further connect with consumers, while deepening their presence in foreign markets, particularly in Asia. 

The year 2019 was also dynamic in terms of acquisitions, with a handful of Italian BPC (beauty and personal care) companies buying businesses that specialise in new and different products to extend their reach in new product categories, both domestically and abroad.…

Indian apparel exporters fear losing business, maybe forcing some to close units, over the Failure of the government to pay promised tax benefits since March (2019), which according to the Apparel Export Promotion Council of India (AEPC), now amount to more than USD 710 million.…

GLOBAL and regional public policies promoting environmental good practice and fighting climate change have long encouraged the growth of renewable energy production. And with concern about global warming sharpening, these goals – pushed by international and regional organisations and development banks – are here to stay.…

Corruption, bribery and fraud are now perceived as the biggest risk to commercial health by Indian businesses, domestically and foreign-owned says the India Risk Survey 2019. This is a major change compared to 2018, when the survey put these risks at the eighth most serious concern, behind cyber-insecurity, natural hazards, fire, terrorism, governance instability, labour unrests and general crime.…

A queue formed at the L’Oréal stand at November’s China International Import Expo fair, in Shanghai: the French firm had set up photo opportunities to appeal the ‘Da ka’ set – Chinese slang referring to generation of selfie-taking youths who seemingly live to photograph themselves at important landmarks.…

USA polyester textured yarn importers sourcing from China and India are being forced to pay deposits on their cargoes covering anticipated heavy anti-dumping and countervailing duties which could be imposed in the New Year. These traders and their manufacturing partners are awaiting a decision from the US International Trade Commission (ITC) in late December over claims from the US department of commerce (DoC) that Indian and Chinese yarn makers are both being unfairly subsidised by their government and dumping cheap excess production on American markets.…

GOVERNMENT agencies in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan are taking steps to develop products and fabrics made from yak hair, eyeing potentially lucrative sales of a rare fabric, whose profile could be boosted by the country’s growing tourism industry.

The Bhutanese government is proactively developing handcraft traditions of spinning hair from yaks, of which more than 30,000 are herded in Bhutan’s generally mountainous terrain.…

Data by the Asia Nonwoven Fabrics Association (ANFA) shows that nonwovens production in Asia increased by a robust 6.5% year-on-year in 2018, to 5.6 million tonnes. China-based manufacturers were responsible for the bulk of this output, producing 4 million tonnes. However, but India-based production increased at faster pace, at 15.9% up, year-on-year.…

Indian steel manufacturers think that the Indian government will trim its support for their exports following the release of an adverse World Trade Organisation verdict in a subsidy dispute brought by the United States.

“The [Indian] ministry of commerce was already looking at revamping trade and tax policies, which includes scrapping certain export incentive schemes that have been now been termed as subsidies” by the United States, Arnab Kumar Hazra, assistant secretary general of Indian Steel Association told Metal Bulletin, “It might expedite the process after [the new] WTO announcement.”…

Eleven years after Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade approved its textile and garment industry development strategy for 2010-2020, the availability of domestically-made textile inputs remains a major problem, hindering clothing manufacturers in the country.

Jacky Roy, CEO of Signature Kollections Group- Vietnam, a knit and woven apparel manufacturer based in the UK and India, told just-style that the “price of local cotton or polyester fabric compared to imported fabric is 40 percent higher, making it too costly to fully replace imports.”…

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) knitwear sector will be pushed to improve its sustainability within 100 days of a new European Commission taking office, expected to happen on December 1. That is the deadline that a new Commission executive vice-president Frans Timmermans must meet to propose a ‘green deal’ package of reforms, that will include new commitments for EU industries to reduce waste and pollution.…

In every industry, including the clothing and textile sector, sustainability often means huge amount of long-term investment – be it new sewage processing systems or recycling technology. But how to get rewards from these investments? At the Integral Conversation conference held by Hong Kong-based shirt manufacturer, Esquel, in Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, on November 8, companies in the fashion industry were exploring solutions.…

Haldiram’s, Indian snacks, confectionery and food service major, is to use Amazon’s e-retail platform to market its products online in the United States.

“This will facilitate and enhance the experience of our customers in United States,” Gaurav Mahajan, head of marketing for Haldiram Snacks Pvt Ltd in New Delhi, told just-food, “it is a huge market and we expect to increase our sales by four to five percent” there.…

INDIA maybe a populous and diverse country with its 1.36 million potential consumers who speak 22 languages, but one company maintains a strong, even dominant, position in India’s fast-growing chocolate market which saw sales of USD1.8 billion in 2018, according to GlobalData – Mondelēz International Inc’s Cadbury brand.…

The British subsidiary of French engineering giant Alstom has been fined GBP15 million (USD19.37 million) plus GBP1.4 million (USD1.8 million) costs over bribes it paid to win a key contract to build trams to serve the Tunisian capital Tunis. The fine comes more than a year after Alstom Network UK’s April 2018 conviction for bribery and corruption, in a case brought by the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO). …

RETALIATORY duties imposed by the USA in a trade dispute with the European Union (EU) over aeroplane subsidies will, argues Italian farmers union, Coldiretti, shrink Italian food exports to the US by 20%, with the Italian speciality cheese sector being the hardest hit.…

As national, regional and international legislation nudges the world away from its reliance on fossil fuels, corporations are increasingly sourcing renewable energy through the mechanism of green power purchase agreements (PPAs), whereby companies (and also utilities) act as an off-taker, making commitments for future renewable energy payments.…

Beauty markets in sub-Saharan Africa are becoming more sophisticated, and with this comes an increasing desire by consumers to use cosmetics that better match their own skin and hair characteristics, rather than utilising products that of more universal appeal.

Nigeria’s personal care product industry continues to grow, and given its population is the largest in Africa – now estimated by the United Nations at 200 million – this market inevitably has the most potential in the continent.…

THE GERMAN government has signalled that it could encourage its luxury carmakers to establish plants in Bangladesh, especially if the south Asian country invests in its energy, power and transport infrastructure.

“We agreed it would be great if a German carmaker would invest in Bangladesh,” Peter Fahrenholtz, German ambassador to Bangladesh tweeted, after a meeting with Bangladeshi finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal in the capital Dhaka on September 9 (2019).…

SALES of Indian apparel exports continue to be sluggish even after registering a 11% growth in July compared to June this year, after three months of continuous decline. According to a monthly newsletter issued by the Clothing Manufacturers Association of India on October 5, India exported USD1.36 billion’s worth of apparel in July, which was also 7% more than July 2018.…

RUSSIA’S dairy industry has been trying to develop its size and sales while its government’s restrictions on European Union (EU) dairy imports remain, but there are questions about how well producers would cope with imports once these sanctions are, eventually, lifted.…

OUTSOURCING centres in Asia for the international textile sector are increasingly adopting digital technologies to improve the efficiency of their weaving, as they compete for business from clothing manufacturers and brands.

Bangladesh weavers are becoming increasingly tech-savvy to improve efficiency while driving down costs.…

THE PHILIPPINES and Thailand cigarette industries are still fighting a long trade dispute that has seen litigation rumble through the World Trade Organisation (WTO) since 2008. That year, the Philippines government lodged a series of complaints with the WTO’s disputes settlement body (DSB) that the Thai Customs Department had imposed unjust restrictions on imports of cigarettes from the Philippines.…

MILITARIES try to outsmart the enemy, and researchers tasked with producing textiles to aid effective missions are often told to create materials that could defeat imagined as-yet unconfirmed threats.

“Intelligence shares what threats might look like and we look to address them before anything happens,” said Richard M Arndt, public affairs officer with the US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC) Chemical Biological Center, based in Maryland.…

Predicting fashion trends in advance to match supply chain requirements has long been a challenge for the knitwear industry and it is now developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine technology that learns from social media images to get ahead of the market.…

Jordanian garment manufacturers and supporting institutions like the International Labour Organization’s Better Work Jordan, plan to introduce garment design training to add value to a sector that is primarily ‘cut and sew’.

Jordan exported USD1.8 billion’s worth of garments last year, just over half to the USA, at USD1.02 billion, but designs are primarily provided by buyers and retailers, with minimal design in-country.…

India’s new mandatory requirements for corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes is forcing country’s garment exporters to refocus on their community development schemes and make special provisions to record all the spending.

A Companies (Amendment) Act 2019, adopted by the Indian parliament in July, mandates three-year imprisonment for the officers of the company found to be defaulting on CSR regulations.…

THE TURKISH plastics manufacturing sector has grown exponentially over the past decade, but growth has spluttered over the past year due to the country’s economic downturn and currency depreciation raising the cost of raw materials. Investment has also slowed, but manufacturers are optimistic the sector will rebound, with exports remaining strong.…

COSMETICS companies serving the south Asia market may grumble that they are facing challenges, but the reality is the region’s emerging markets offer growth rates that can only be dreamt of in richer countries.

India’s beauty and personal care product market is a case in point.…

VIETNAM has been a major textile production hub for years and, as the country’s government pushes sectors to embrace technology associated with the Industry 4.0 movement, some companies are adapting advanced methods such as digital textile printing.

According to statistics from India-based Mordor Intelligence, Vietnam is the third-largest garment exporter in the world, with the United States, the European Union, Japan and South Korea serving as major destination markets. …

CHINA’S ministry of finance drafted regulations punishing accountants violating national accounting laws. Proposals under public consultation would include blacklisting accountants found guilty of fabricating, hiding or destroying financial reports, books and documents, or telling other accountants to undertake such malpractice. Accountants involved in embezzlement would suffer the same fate.…

THE CHINESE government has from September 1 imposed 5% additional retaliatory duties on US exports of paint to China, in the latest round of the trade war between the two countries. The new tariffs cover products such as polyester, acrylic, ethylene and polyeurathane powdered paints; acrylic, polymer and vinyl liquid paints; and more – see http://gss.mof.gov.cn/zhengwuxinxi/zhengcefabu/201908/P020190823604938915640.pdf…

PAKISTAN textile mill owners have decided to import cotton from alternative destinations to India following the government’s announcement of the suspension of trade ties with their neighbour because of the dispute over Kashmir.

On August 5, the Indian government said it was revoking the special status of Jammu & Kashmir state, turning it into a union territory, under control of the central government – Pakistan claims sovereignty over Kashmir and it has been a bone of contention between India, Pakistan and China since 1947.…

India’s draft regulations for traffic light labelling on packaged food items have been postponed for further consultations, a Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) spokesperson has confirmed to just-food. The move, she said, recognised that there was too much opposition across the Indian food sector to introduce the planned labelling reform as it stands: “It is a very big move and if the entire industry is against it how can you do that?”…

Aditya Birla group’s Autumn-Winter 20-21 collection to be showcased at Première Vision, Paris, on September 17-19, 2019, has been designed to stress how the Indian major’s output makes a positive contribution promoting sustainability at a global level. This collection is dominated by garments fashioned from its Livaeco cellulose fibre, with which Birla targets international players in the “consciously fashionable” space, Nelson Jaffery, assistant vice president, design and development, Aditya Birla Group, told Twist International.…

A WAVE of oil and gas structure decommissioning in the North Sea, a steady continuing flow in the USA’s Gulf of Mexico fields, and a similar longer-term challenge in south-east Asia are concentrating minds on the infrastructure needed to dismantle such equipment safely.…

The news that major American retailer Barneys New York has entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy and plans to close all but two stores is yet another warning sign for the industry that brands should not rely upon department stores to sell their product.…

CONTINUOUS dyeing technology is being refined and improved and offering finishers worldwide the chance to improve their output efficiency, while reducing chemical, water and energy usage. However, emerging markets finishers can struggle to find the investment costs required to install this top-line cutting edge dyeing machinery.…

THE INDIAN cosmetics market is becoming increasingly focused on environmental issues and personal care product companies are being forced to adapt accordingly. “‘Water conservation’, ‘anti-pollution’, ‘plastic ban’ and ‘paraben free’ are the claims that more and more consumers like and brands are getting very savvy of,” Koyel Mukherjea, new business development specialist for the beauty and personal care sector, at market intelligence company, told Soap Perfumery and Cosmetics (SPC).…

A EUROPEAN Union (EU) trade deal struck with South America’s Mercosur group of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, will open this emerging market to EU confectionery exporters, but Europe’s sugar sector fears increased Brazilian sugar exports. The agreement, which now needs to be ratified by both sides, will phase out Mercosur duties on EU exports of chocolate and sugar confectionery of 20%; biscuits (taxed at 20% to 35%); liquorice extract – 8%; and confectionery-making equipment – 14%.…

Clothing industry sources in the Philippines say that the USA-China trade war has helped boost orders for all garment-exporting countries in southeast Asia but their country, despite the Philippines government’s plan to boost local manufacturing capacity. The much-trumpeted Manufacturing Resurgence Programme of President Rodrigo Duterte had originally stated that a national ‘Roadmap for the Garments and Textile Industry’ should be drafted by the end of last year (2018).…

Months after taking the reins as president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), Dr Rubana Huq is determined to fulfill her key goal of ensuring the industry effectively monitors its own environmental and health standards.

It is an important job given how the country’s clothing and textile sector has worked to improve a safety reputation battered by the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster.…

THE INTENSIFYING trade war between the USA and China has proved to be an opportunity for some larger Chinese clothing manufacturing firms, some of which had already built capacity overseas, notably in southeast Asia, and Vietnam especially. These companies have been able to adjust to the worsening tariff barriers to the US market for China-sourced exports, whereas smaller companies unable to afford new SE Asia operations have suffered.…

INDIAN knitwear exporters are hoping for a windfall of orders from the US following a spurt in client enquiries, which industry leaders believe are linked to the US-China trade dispute and the latest tariff hike on Chinese clothing and textile exports to America.…

AS government authorities in Botswana envisage seeing their country becoming an education hub for southern Africa, colleges within the country are steadily transforming themselves into universities.

Over the past 19 years, four colleges have evolved into fully-fledged universities – two private; two public.…

As an industry much maligned for its heavy carbon footprint, the oil and gas sector is increasing its use of sustainable materials and manufacturing methods making textiles used for its protective clothing. This segment has also been focusing on improving the comfort and aesthetics of this apparel.…

THE NONWOVENS industry in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is still struggling with over-capacity, while declining purchasing power has hit the mid- and higher-tier segments, prompting global players to reconsider product offerings.

MENA economies have been impacted by low oil prices and regional instability, with growth forecast at 1.5% this year, down from 1.7% in 2018, according to investment bank JP Morgan.…

THE TRADE war between the USA and China that has seen both sides impose a wide range of duties on each other’s exports has depressed Australian wool prices though a reduction in demand from key Chinese buyers.

Australian Council of Wool Exporters and Processors executive director Peter Morgan told just-style that the Washington-Beijing stand-off has come during other events depressing wool sales: “Events such as the US, China trade wars, US, India trade disputes, the US, Iran political tensions and the negative rhetoric during the recent G20 meeting” have been  disruptive and this obviously “effect global economic confidence,” he said.…

AB InBev has been banned from selling beer in India’s capital New Delhi for three years as a penalty for alleged tax evasion. The brands affected by the order include Budweiser, Corona, Hoegaarden and Stella Artois, which cannot be sold from earlier this week.…

THE EUROPEAN cosmetics sector will continue to maintain that the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA)’s microplastics restriction proposal is disproportionate, industry experts told European personal care association Cosmetics Europe’s annual conference 2019.

At the June 12-13 meeting in Brussels, they claimed ECHA’s January 2019 proposal should be proportionate, coherent, effective and enforceable – but, at present, looking at the existing proposal, this is not the case.…

IT has been another subdued year for the beauty and personal care product market in Latin America, as the region’s economy underperforms yet again after six years of deceleration (and in some countries outright recession), keeping a lid on sales growth. …

VIETNAMESE technical textile producers look set to capitalise on the ongoing trade war between the US and China with an increase in approaches from American automotive supply chain clients already being witnessed.

In May, the Trump regime increased tariffs on USD200 billion of imported Chinese goods, including many technical textiles and end-products made of technical textiles.…

Industry forecasts for Italy’s paints and coatings market are expected to remain relatively stable through 2019, mainly sustained by stability in the domestic construction and automotive sectors and continuing sales growth in foreign markets. Data from market research provider Euromonitor International released last December (2018) projected production turnover in Italy to grow by 0.5% in the 2018-2019 period, with an estimated value of just over EUR6.1 billion in 2019.…

Regulators have started to actively encourage financial institutions to experiment and use machine learning to detect suspicious activity.

US regulatory authorities have called for innovative approaches to meet AML compliance obligations “to further strengthen the financial system against illicit activity”.

In a joint statement, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; USA FIU the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN); the National Credit Union Administration, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced their support for innovative technology development last December.…

WOLLASTONITE has been described by a Canadian producer as “a white mineral for a greener world,” and it seems governments, businesses and industries agree – with wollastonite is set to see increased market growth in its traditional uses plus a new focus on its powerful qualities to help tackle climate change.…

INDIAN knitwear exporters are hoping for a windfall of orders from the US following a spurt in client enquiries, which industry leaders believe are linked to the US-China trade dispute and the latest tariff hike on Chinese clothing and textile exports to America.…

WOLLASTONITE has been described by a Canadian producer as “a white mineral for a greener world,” and it seems governments, businesses and industries agree – with wollastonite is set to see increased market growth in its traditional uses plus a new focus on its powerful qualities to help tackle climate change.…

Regulators have started to actively encourage financial institutions to experiment and use machine learning to detect suspicious activity.

US regulatory authorities have called for innovative approaches to meet AML compliance obligations “to further strengthen the financial system against illicit activity”.

In a joint statement, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; USA FIU the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN); the National Credit Union Administration, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced their support for innovative technology development last December.…

JAPAN clothing brands have protected themselves in advance against exposure from the US-China trade war by decreasing their reliance on China-based manufacturing outposts in recent years. This sourcing diversification has occurred initially because of rising costs in China.

According to the Japan Apparel Fashion Industry Council (JAFIC), this movement away from Japan means the impact on Japanese textile and apparel companies from US tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on China-made exports would be “slight”.…

India’s new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government, that took office on May 30 following its April and May election victory, is planning to increase the country’s minimum wage rates, which could damage the current cost advantages enjoyed of Indian apparel exporters, warned an industry body.…

A corporate restructuring by India’s Tata Group to demerge its chemical business from its consumer products divisions may encourage the conglomerate to boost its position in India’s highly competitive processed food sector, say experts.

“Tata may create a new identity by not only expanding its portfolio of ‘Sampann’ spices brand but also launching new food products that would compete with the offerings of established mid-sized companies like [Bengaluru-based] MTR Foods or [New Delhi-based] MDH,” Himanshu Manglik, president of Gurgaon-based consultancy firm Walnutcap told just-food.…

AFRICAN swine fever (ASF) has been squeezing pork supplies in China to a point where the country’s political leadership fears upheaval, as reflected by the country’s government influenced social media restricting ASF-related discussion. Even academic articles, if ASF-themed, now require explicit regulatory approval before publishing, informed sources in China, who requested anonymity, told just-food.  …

ANTI-fraud experts understand that managers always need to be aware of the potential for their organisations to lose money to fraud and corruption. But the fact that the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/acfepublic/2018-report-to-the-nations.pdf

estimates an average 5% of public and private revenues are lost to fraud indicates that more awareness is needed.…

AN INDIAN government’s Indian Rupees INR133.43 billion (USD1.9 billion) initiative to eradicate foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) from the country will increase meat exports from the country, say experts. “It will definitely help opening up meat markets especially China, which is the biggest,” Priya Sud, a partner at buffalo meat exporting firm Al Noor Exports, in New Delhi, told GlobalMeatNews.…

AN INDIAN government’s Indian Rupees INR133.43 billion (USD1.9 billion) initiative to eradicate foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) from the country will increase meat exports from the country, say experts. “It will definitely help opening up meat markets especially China, which is the biggest,” Priya Sud, a partner at buffalo meat exporting firm Al Noor Exports, in New Delhi, told GlobalMeatNews.…

ANTI-fraud experts understand that managers always need to be aware of the potential for their organisations to lose money to fraud and corruption. But the fact that the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/acfepublic/2018-report-to-the-nations.pdf

estimates an average 5% of public and private revenues are lost to fraud indicates that more awareness is needed.…

American mega-retailer Walmart has settled charges imposed by the USA Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by failing to operate a sufficiently robust anti-corruption compliance programme as the retailer expanded rapidly internationally. Walmart has paid over USD144 million to settle the SEC’s charges and around USD138 million to resolve parallel criminal charges laid by the US Department of Justice, with the combined total topping USD282 million.…

THE INTERNATIONAL Organization for Standardization (ISO) has launched a series of standards designed to help the cocoa industry ensure its products are both sustainably harvested and processed, but also traceable across their supply chains. Its ISO 34101 series is designed to promote good environmental and labour practices in a sector that involves sophisticated confectionery companies, global commodity traders and small farmers, often in poor countries, notably in west Africa.…

The US paint and coatings industry is set to experience pain as “the spectre of significantly reduced profits looms large” because of the ongoing trade war over tariffs with China, a trade think-tank has warned.

And American industry representatives have indicated job losses and “negative financial impacts” could result from the tariffs increasing the cost of chemicals and other raw materials imported by the sector.…

MONEY service businesses (MSBs) are having a tougher time operating in compliance with international AMF/CFT rules, especially those in emerging market countries, where they have to deal with a double challenge of tighter controls and derisking by banking partners.

MSBs throughout the Middle East, for instance, have been hit by derisking from correspondent banks as well as designations by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).…

THE INDIAN clothing and textile industry thinks it is better able to score export orders internationally since March when the central government announced new tax benefits for the country’s garment exporters. Rahul Mehta, president of Clothing Manufacturing Association of India, told just-style, that the combined reduction in costs delivered by a refund of the central and state taxes, new benefits under the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS), and renewed 2% duty drawbacks, is 9% to 10%, and that “makes us more competitive”.…

THE LONG lines of customer to the cash register in Inditex stores – the giant Spanish company behind High Street fashion brands Zara, Bershka and Pull&Bear (among others) – are also now buying personal care products as well as clothes. They funnel customers through shelves that are not only bursting with low-cost impulse buys, such as hair accessories, smart phone covers and key rings, but now also Inditex scents.…

INDIAN authorities have seized more than USD120 million’s worth of unaccounted cash during the six-week long general election that concluded in May [2019]. Law enforcers have warned that this could be for vote buying, making a future government susceptible to corruption, promoting graft in business.…

VIETNAMESE cotton yarn-makers face a period of uncertainty due to raw material price volatility and the ongoing trade war between the US and China which threatens demand stability from Chinese textile and clothing manufacturers. China is the largest importer of Vietnamese yarn and accounts for more than 60% of Vietnam’s total yarn exports. …

MOTOR vehicles and their parts were the second most common category of goods reported in safety warnings by consumer regulators in the European Union (EU) last year, according to a new annual report from the EU Safety Gate system. This involves European consumer regulators receiving safety warnings about products, including from auto manufacturers, and circulating these alerts via this central European portal.…

Haldiram’s, a major Indian processed food maker is investing into start-up companies through a Mumbai-based incubator platform Venture Catalysts, just-food has been told.

“It is not necessarily about getting returns but they [Haldiram’s] want to be a part of the start-up journey and work closely with them,” an investment consultant with a detailed knowledge of the investment told just-food, “They want to know which are the new happening businesses and would like to participate as an investor and a guide.”…

THE INTERNATIONAL clothing industry needs to take a holistic and assertive approach to fighting intellectual property theft and counterfeiting, which while can be easier to detect today, because of advances in data analysis, still poses a significant threat, an expert USA seminar was told.…

CHINA continues to be the largest source of clothing and accessories detected as being unsafe for consumers in the European Union (EU), according to data analysed by just-style from the EU Safety Gate database.

Formerly the EU Rapid Alert System (RAPEX), the database shows that of the 221 safety warnings issued by the system about apparel and accessory products in 2018, 102 of these lines were supplied from China.…

INTERNATIONAL efforts are under way to improve how airports can serve as effective humanitarian logistics hubs, reducing the risk that they become bottlenecks in disaster relief efforts. These moves follow research and a growing consensus in the air and aid sectors that while airports are undoubtedly a lifeline during crises, they can also hamper the efficient delivery of aid to victims.…

Haldiram’s, a major Indian processed food maker is investing into start-up companies through a Mumbai-based incubator platform Venture Catalysts, just-food has been told.

“It is not necessarily about getting returns but they [Haldiram’s] want to be a part of the start-up journey and work closely with them,” an investment consultant with a detailed knowledge of the investment told just-food, “They want to know which are the new happening businesses and would like to participate as an investor and a guide.”…

Coated, laminated and padded textiles play key roles in a vast range of emerging products, with experts explaining at a Berlin conference how the technical textile sector has been continuously developing cutting edge technology to make such materials.

The International Conference on Textile Coating and Laminating (TCL2019), held in mid-March in Berlin, Germany, had a special focus on bedding developments.…

SUPERFRUITS offer personal care product brands lots of marketing muscle, delivering an image of exoticism, as well as offering real functional benefits.

As a result, beauty companies have been willing to trawl the world for new super fruit ingredients to give their lines a competitive edge.…

BIOCIDAL coating products are some of the most demanding lines to make, sell and import for manufacturers and suppliers as far as regulatory compliance is concerned. Legitimate concerns among environmental health regulators to ensure that biocides only kill the micro- or larger organisms that they target, without unintended damaging side-effects, mean that biocide controls are constantly under review.…

Digital disruption has been transforming banking services worldwide, and Africa, with its important m-commerce sector, has been in the frontline of this change – a fact not lost on established bank executives, such as Samuel Fredrick Mwogeza, the chief financial officer of Stanbic Bank Uganda Ltd.…

IN a country where tax collection remains weak, Bangladesh accounting experts now hope that a 2012 transfer pricing (TP) law is finally starting to increase revenues, although progress is slow. Demonstrating the difficulties involved in rolling out complex tax legislation in emerging market states that targets powerful multinationals, the country’s National Board of Revenue (NBR) says that it collected just USD1.2 million’s worth more taxes from 10 multinationals (which it would not name) in the financial year to last June (2018) than without taking TP into account.…

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) chocolate, biscuit and confectionery industry association CAOBISCO has raised concerns that EU exporters will be unable to exploit the reduction of Japanese tariffs under the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), in force since February 1. CAOBISCO is concerned about how the deal includes rules of origin forcing its members to demonstrate how they source specific volumes of ingredients from the EU, rather than their value, which would be easier to demonstrate.…

PAKISTAN’S textile manufacturers and exporters appear divided over the possible negative impact on the country’s textile sector arising from prevailing tensions on the Indian border.

According to exporters, concern cause by air strikes by India in Balakot – in Pakistan’s Khayber Pakhtunkhwa province – on February 26 – will affect export volumes as some foreign buyers may have diverted new orders to other countries like Bangladesh and China.…

CANDIDATES in next month’s presidential election in Indonesia have pledged to bolster the country’s textile industry but remain tight-lipped about specific details for improvement. 

Industry association leaders have said incumbent President Joko Widodo’s infrastructure investment drive has yet to result in lower logistics costs for the sector – but still favour his plans over those of his presidential rival.…

THE EGYPTIAN economy is still struggling to overcome the problem of low hard currency reserves, a challenge that has negatively affected the local paints and coatings industry due its high dependence on imports.

“There has been a crisis in terms of availability of US dollars to purchase raw materials and most of the raw materials are imported,” said Himanshu Vasisht, project lead for energy and chemicals at India-based market researcher Mordor Intelligence.…

China and India as the world’s two most populous nations share a handful of similarities in their AML policies, but there are important contrasts, many springing from the fact that China is an authoritarian one-party state and India a sometimes chaotic multi-party democracy.…

THE PASSING of the USD5 billion annual clothing export milestone by Sri Lanka is especially significant, says its industry association, because it has been achieved while maintaining an “ethical and reliable brand”.

The country’s total clothing exports reached USD5.05 billion last year (2018 calendar year), posting an annual gain of 4.97% year-on-year, Joint Apparel Association Forum Sri Lanka (JAAFSL) secretary general, Tuly Cooray told just-style.…

India’s potato chips/crisps market was worth USD2.59 billion in 2017 and is growing at an annual rate of 18.7%, data analytics firm GlobalData reports, and is expected to soar to a value of USD5.5 billion in 2022. The sale of branded chips sold by manufacturers across India is dominated by a handful of big companies – making up USD900 million of the segment’s total receipts, according to Indian ethnic food manufacturer and retailer Haldiram Snacks Pvt Ltd.…

India’s fast-growing potato chips market has huge potential for future growth, driven especially by rising demand in the rural markets, where two thirds of India’s 1.3 billion people still live.

For example, in the fast moving consumer goods segment, India’s rural market accounts for 40% of the national sales and is growing at about 10% annually, which is faster than the urban markets, said a ‘Indian Rural Market’ report issued by Confederation of Indian Industries in March 2017.…

INDIA’S large military forces are to start sourcing a significant volumes of technical textile products from private companies from next year (2020), opening up a new market for local and international manufacturers, delegates at a recent conference were told in New Delhi.…

THE JAPANESE nuclear sector may have the backing of its government, but a combination of technical challenges and public unpopularity is impeding plans to restore the country’s nuclear capacity towards its generation before the Fukushima disaster in 2011.

During a news conference on January 1, Hiroaki Nakanishi, chairman of the Japan Business Federation, was pessimistic about the industry’s future.…

GOVERNMENT moves in Pakistan to rationalise taxes, duties and other levies for exporting manufacturers have been widely welcomed by the country’s textile sector.

The government has withdrawn a 3% customs duty, 2% additional customs duty and 5% sales tax on imports of raw cotton, meeting a further long-standing demand of the textile industry, besides allowing a five-year tax break for new textile manufacturing plants.…

INDIA’S Aditya Birla Group is continuing to improve its sustainability profile, with the global launch of a new ‘LivaEco’ fabric at the Première Vision show, held in Paris, France, from February 12 to 14, (2019).

The fabric, which will be available globally, is sourced from sustainable forests, all with Forest Stewardship Council certification, its production consumes less water than many rival fabrics and, when disposed of, biodegrades within six weeks.…

IF evidence was needed that India’s consumer food market was becoming increasingly open to foreign tastes, Godrej Nature’s Basket, a premium fresh and fine foods store with an online and offline presence across India, claims 40% of its sales come from international food lines, mostly imported.…

Beer standards India will be tightened from April 1, with a new regulation coming into force that limits the maximum yeast count in draught beer to 40 CFU (colony-forming units) and to zero for bottled beer.

The goal of this new Food Safety and Standards (Alcoholic Beverages Standards) Regulation, 2018, 

https://fssai.gov.in/dam/jcr:cd57d3d9-03fc-4b2c-bf94-8006bc4bb6de/Gazette_Notification_Alcoholic_Beverages_05_04_2018.pdf …

INDIAN Prime Minister Narendra Modi has laid the foundation stone of a newly approved greenfield airport at Hollongi, south of Itanagar, the state capital of Arunachal Pradesh, north-east India. The ministry of civil aviation cleared the proposal in December (2018), which will see Indian Rupees 9.5 billion (USD133 million) being spent to build an airport with a terminal of 4,100 square metres and a peak handling capacity of 200 passengers per hour.…

BRITAIN’S Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has closed two long-running major investigations into allegations of corruption and bribery at two of the UK’s largest companies: aero-engine maker Rolls-Royce and medicine manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline. Rolls-Royce has been subject to a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA), approved in January 2017, where it paid a GBP497.25 million (USD616 million) plus interest penalty and GBP13 million costs (USD16.1 million) over 12 counts of conspiracy to corrupt, false accounting and failure to prevent bribery in Indonesia, Thailand, India, Russia, Nigeria, China and Malaysia.…

The coatings market of South Korea looks on track to achieve modest growth this year, with gains in architectural coating sales and a mild revival of marine coatings projected to offset a deteriorating outlook for automotive coatings. The overall South Korea paint and coatings market in 2018 has been estimated by market researchers Frost & Sullivan at USD4.5 billion in sales and 1 million tonnes in 2018, making it the fourth largest coatings market in Asia, in both value and volume terms – behind China, Japan and India.…

Increasing instances of cyberattacks in India are compelling major businesses to upgrade their digital security by allocating extra resources and enforcing stricter security standards. But not all corporations are taking enough precautions. Raghavendra Verma reports from New Delhi.

Proactive measures utilising specialised teams of highly-paid information technology professionals are becoming increasingly common in the fight against ransomware, hacking, phishing, identity theft, data theft and related cybercrimes in India.…

JORDAN garment exporters maybe growing their export sales, but high costs and declining local purchases could weaken their ability to take advantage of robust growth in overseas demand, industry experts have told just-style.

Jordan’s garments exports are expected to have generated receipts of USD1.8 billion in 2018, and their value is expected to grow by at least 8% in 2019, a source at the Jordan Enterprise Development Corporation told the Jordan Times newspaper this week.…

The African Union’s African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement is expected to provide a boost to Egypt’s garments industry and enable it to better compete in the global market, but logistics and Egyptian export red tape will pose a major challenge, say industry executives.…

CIVIL aviation traffic will more than treble in the next three decades, projections from the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) claim, with annual growth averaging at 4.1% between 2015 and 2045, according to figures generated in 2018. Data passed to Jane’s Airport Review says that medium-term growth will be similarly robust, with annual growth averaging at 4.3% between 2015 and 2035.…

A TECHNOLOGY entwined with fossil fuels that, by the of 2018, boasted 43 large-scale facilities, (18 in commercial operation, five in construction and 20 in development), and which processed almost 40 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of CO2, is clearly more than a passing fad.…

Considerable investments continue to be made in Italy’s beauty and personal care market continue despite this being a stagnant market, according to sector-specific and general economic data and forecasts,

Despite this, global retailers in the beauty and personal care (BPC) industry continue to eye up what remains one of continental Europe’s largest domestic BPC markets, knowing that consumer demand remains solid, even if not growing.…

EMBATTLED Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has launched appeal proceedings against a mammoth USD4.69 billion judgement as it fights on to salvage its reputation amid increasing claims its Baby Powder causes cancer.

Dubbed by one attorney as the biggest public health scandal after tobacco, the American personal care product giant is currently fending off almost 12,000 other lawsuits.…

WITH the Asia-Pacific coatings market and industry being one of the most dynamic worldwide, experiencing continuous robust growth, the potential for additives to give brands an edge in seizing market share is increasingly important.

Backed by buoyant construction, automotive and marine industries across the Asia Pacific, the region’s paint and coatings additives market is showing promising growth, analysts say.…

INDIA’S knitted medical stockings maker Ista Healthcare has been in business for only three years but has already been exporting products, has created backward integration and is now seeking venture capital for future expansion.

“Our product has been created right from scratch and is now accepted worldwide,” said Kumaraguru Muthuswamy, chief executive of Ista Healthcare LLP, based in the southern Indian city of Coimbatore, in Tamil Nadu state.…

THE FOOD Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has issued new regulations controlling advertising and label claims for food products that restrict the use of words and phrases such as ‘natural’, ‘fresh’, ‘original’, ‘traditional’, ‘authentic’, ‘genuine’ and ‘real’. Detailed technical guidance is included within the regulation setting out the manufacturing process that must be followed for such terms to be used to promote these foods.…

With manufacturing technology advancing at an ever-faster pace, sports apparel companies need to constantly look for ways to embrace new techniques to compete in a constantly changing landscape, an international industry meeting has been told.

Sustainability, blockchain and Industry 4.0 are three of the most important trends being considered by brands and their suppliers, and they were focal points at the sixth World Manufacturers Forum (WMF), organised by the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI) in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from December 11-12.…

AS the second largest economy within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc, Thailand remains a key market in the region for paint and coatings sales. Regarding sales of home paints and coatings, including lacquers and varnishes, London-based market researcher Euromonitor International says that sales have been growing strongly.…

THE WORLD Trade Organisation (WTO) Disputes Settlement Body (DSB) has approved establishing disputes settlement panels ruling sought by the USA on whether retaliatory duties imposed by the European Union (EU), Canada, China, and Mexico on US confectionery and sweet bakery and associated ingredient exports, imposed in response to America’s controversial steel and aluminium tariffs, break WTO rules.…

There are two displays in the Moscow office of the CFO of Volvo Car Russia, Vladimir Lagutin, that catches the attention, immediately: a large elegantly-framed poster of UK electronic music band Depeche Mode and a case of tennis balls.

“Those things – music and tennis – keep me from being stressed,” says Lagutin.…

FINANCIAL institutions and other anti-money laundering reporting sectors within Vietnam have had to grapple, since January 1, with a revised Penal Code, which has changed how money laundering is defined in criminal law.

In its 2018, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), the USA State Department notes that this “revises the money laundering offence and adds criminal liability for legal persons involved in money laundering.”…

With the USA re-imposing sanctions on Iran, and international financial institutions wary of dealing with the country, Tehran is dusting off its pre-2015 sanctions-busting playbook. Old networks are being renewed, including with neighbouring countries and China, but there are more obstacles for the Iranian government to contend with this time around.…

The conventional arms trade has a reputation for using side payment sweeteners to secure multi-million dollar deals. But despite allegations of corruption in numerous jurisdictions, the legitimate arms trade is not on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) radar. Should it be?…

BANGLADESH’S unions have yet to be satisfied by an increase in the country’s minimum wage, which was published in a government gazette on October 8, hiking minimum wages for entry-level knitwear workers by 51% to USD95-a-month from December, up from the USD63 set in 2013.…

AFRICAN garment and textile manufacturers have a long way to go to increase capacity, develop the supply chain and diversify overall production away from North Africa, an industry conference staged in Cairo has been told. But while north Africa accounts for more than USD10 billion out the continent’s USD13.54 billion in clothing and textile exports (during 2016, according to international trade data), the much discussed potential of Africa as the world’s next sourcing hub is starting to materialise.…

AFRICAN garment and textile manufacturers have a long way to go to increase capacity, develop the supply chain and diversify overall production away from North Africa, an industry conference staged in Cairo has been told. But while north Africa accounts for more than USD10 billion out the continent’s USD13.54 billion in clothing and textile exports (during 2016, according to international trade data), the much discussed potential of Africa as the world’s next sourcing hub is starting to materialise.…

DIGITAL production technologies could help African manufacturers pick up business lost by Chinese rivals because of the trade war in the USA, with brands looking to take advantage of the free trade agreements that many African countries have with the USA and Europe.…

MPs in Canada have returned to their House of Commons after the traditional summer break, when they are expected to vote on a draft law, the Cruelty-Free Cosmetics Act, that would ban the testing of cosmetics and their ingredients on annals in Canada and block the sale of personal care products that have been assessed using such techniques.…

COUNTERFEIT foodstuffs were the most common fake good seized by European Union (EU) customs in 2017 – making up 24% of the total – as fakers increasingly look the Internet to sell their illicit wares. Keith Nuthall unpicks the latest EU data on pirated products.…

WITH reputational risk being an increasing concern for investors, the demand for information in accountancy reports that goes well beyond the balance sheet is growing. And, companies want to be sure that such data is of solid quality – making emerging forms of external reporting (EER) assurance the key focus of a high-level accounting meeting staged in Brussels on November 8.…

THE HONG Kong government has responded to European Union (EU) concerns that its tax system unfairly benefits offshore investment funds by offering them profits tax exemptions. HK is proposing these breaks also apply to onshore funds. The EU had identified these offshore rights as a potentially harmful tax practice, threatening to add HK on its list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions, potentially sparking financial sanctions.…

Paint markets throughout much of the Middle East are experiencing a downturn due to the region’s political instability and economic slowdown. However, manufacturers are nonetheless betting on a rebound as larger projects re-start and reconstruction begins in certain markets.

In the oil-based economies of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, lower oil prices have hit government budgets, causing state-backed projects to be suspended or delayed, while having a knock-on effect on the wider economy.…

THE SERIOUS challenges affecting the growth of the Indian nuclear industry – including the falling cost of competing renewable energy, scarcity of finance, a shortage of skilled manpower and negative public perceptions – have concentrated the minds of industry leaders meeting at the 10th Nuclear Energy Conclave 2018, held in New Delhi.…

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association (VITAS) have endorsed a project named ‘Greening Vietnam’s textile sector through improving water management and energy sustainability’ with the declared aim of transforming the Vietnamese textile industry into a more environmentally friendly and sustainable one.…

As he took in the fourth Africa Sourcing and Fashion Week (ASFW) in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa last week, Kenneth K Han, managing director of Shints ETP Garment Plc, said he is optimistic over the country’s potential in the textile and apparel sector, despite many challenges.…

WITH an estimated USD1.5 trillion lost to the global economy because of bribes, the World Bank is pushing for a diverse array of technology to be deployed – it is a call being answered with anti-graft systems being installed worldwide.

Reducing corruption “is a priority” for the World Bank, it said in a briefing note in September 2017.…

The recent sight of a Chinese internet celebrity in a milking parlour in Limerick could be a hint of what the future holds for Ireland’s increasingly international dairy industry. Xiao Lu Yu, one of the ‘influencers’ who monetise Chinese social media (see https://m.weibo.cn/status/4279583182420503…

AMERICAN confectioners may suffer from the latest tit-for-tat tariff exchange between the USA and China, with retaliatory duties from China targeting US confectionery exports. Many of these duties are high – at 25% – imposed from September 24 on US-made sugar; cocoa powder; milk powder; honey; jams; and more; plus 20% duties on US-made confectionery without cocoa; chewing gum; some chocolates; and more.…

Indonesia is seeking to open new markets for its textile and garment products – not only are free trade agreements with Australia and fellow Asian countries are on the cards, the industry’s association and the government has announced, but the industry is also targeting African export sales.…

Cryptocurrencies have made a big splash across Asia, and governments have taken very different regulatory approaches to curb associated financial scams and money laundering.

While there is one group of countries that has banned the operation and use of cryptocurrencies entirely, including China, India and Vietnam, a second category spans countries that see cryptocurrencies as potentially boosting their own financial sectors.…

India’s Patanjali Ayurved, the fast-moving consumer goods company that trades on traditional values, has launched several dairy and food products including the liquid milk, yogurt, buttermilk and cottage cheese. It will also be marketing frozen vegetables, including peas, sweetcorn, potato chips (NOTE – NOT CRISPS) and assortment of mixed vegetables, the company has said in a statement.…

A FAILURE to embrace and adopt science and technology is hurting the clothing, textile and cotton industries of Africa, delegates attending an International Textile Manufacturers Federation (ITMF) three-day conference in Nairobi, Kenya, from September 7-9. The annual conference, staged this year in a sub-Saharan African country for the first time in the ITMF’s 114 years of existence, heard experts commenting that a reluctance by African companies to adopt new technology had not only slowed growth in the apparel and textile sector, but was also potentially pushing companies towards stagnation.…

The future holds bright promise for India’s instant noodles segment as it will grow at an average annual rate of about 7% until 2023, predicted consultancy firm Technopak.

This market is so big that all noodle companies can co-exist, Suman Dabas, Technopak’s associate director food and agriculture, told just-food.…

INSTANT noodles have become one of the most popular ready-to-cook meals in India with marketing campaigns highlighting their cooking convenience and popularity with children.

With annual sales of USD640 million in 2017, this Indian food segment is growing at 13.4% annually, according to data from London-based market analysis company Euromonitor International.…

PLANS to open a new tourist airport this December, in India’s southern Maharashtra, near the beaches of northern Goa, are moving forward, with a familiarisation flight from Mumbai landing on September 12. India’s ministry of civil aviation noted that Sindhudurg airport, at Parule Chipi, in Maharashtra’s Konkan coast, will have a 2,500-metre runway able to receive Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 planes.…

AMERICAN meat exporters are hoping that the Trump administration aggressive trade policy approach towards China will force Beijing to remove non-tariff bureaucratic barriers that depressed sales before this year’s trade war between the two economic giants.

“We’ve already had Chinese tariffs [in the past] and the conversation is about more than just discussion of tariffs,” said Colin Woodall, vice president of government affairs at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.…

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is launching a hygiene and cleanliness drive in the Indian meat industry though training, food safety audits, certification of animal feed and pushing retailers to make health and safety improvements.

It plans to stage a food safety audit of meat processing units, slaughterhouses, distribution and retail businesses within next three months across 40 cities.…

The latest edition of the biannual China International Trade Fair for Technical Textiles and Nonwovens (Cinte Techtextil China), held September 4-6, in Shanghai, showed how Chinese manufacturers are more than holding their own in these technically demanding markets.

The fair, a spin-off from the Techtextil show in Germany, attracted a diverse range of some 500 exhibitors from around 20 countries, covering 12 different application areas with protech, mobiltech and geotech, spanning wovens, knits and nonwovens, arguably being most prominent. …

A new report from Transparency International has found that only 11 major exporting countries in the world significantly punish companies that pay bribes abroad. The report, called ‘Exporting Corruption’, also found that more than half of world exports come from at least 33 jurisdictions, including several European Union (EU) member states, where companies that export corruption along with their goods and services face weak consequences. …

THE CHINESE government has directly targeted the American confectionery and related ingredients sector in its latest tit-for-tat response in the trade wars launched by US President Donald Trump. Beijing has highlighted these goods as products that may become subject to retaliatory tariffs, should the USA impose a threatened third list of duties on Chinese tech, drafted over alleged thefts of American IP.…

They say the UK can forge its own future by negotiating bespoke trade deals that reflect British interests rather than those of Brussels. But the more comprehensive deals Britain strikes, the more its room to manoeuvre will shrink – because all its trading partners (who are also striking deals with each other) will have to agree the same or similar terms for such deals to work.…

WHILE Vietnamese government officials define the local textile and garment industry as among the economic sectors projected to have one of the highest growth rates in the country over the next 12 years, industry observers stress that more needs to be done to ensure this happens.…

PAKISTAN’s textile sector is gearing up to shift to solar and other renewable energy to combat the effects of escalating power costs which have rendered their businesses uncompetitive in the region.

Reon Energy, which is part of Dawood Hercules Group, based in Karachi, has recently completed the installation of a one megawatt solar project at Kohinoor Textile Mills Limited (KTML), in the Punjab province.…

WITH inflexible rules-based transaction monitoring systems built from a range of legacy systems still dominating the anti-money laundering (AML) landscape, excessive numbers of false positives are causing “mayhem” in the financial services sector, Luca Primerano, now chief AI officer at AML solutions provider Fortytwo Data in London, has claimed.…

THE INDIAN government has been sending out conflicting signals about its trading policy for its important knitwear sector. While it last month (July 18) announced it was increasing import duties for some key knitted apparel and knitwear inputs, talks are moving ahead to forge a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) with 16 Asian counties.…

Signs of an accelerating relocation of garment investment from China to the Philippines are emerging, amidst the US imposing an additional 10% duty on textile and some clothing products from China. The Chinese government retaliation of an additional 25% duty on US cotton imports making raw material sourcing for China-based manufacturers more expensive has also raised the cost of doing business in China.…

India’s newly renamed Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishor Manikya Bahadur Airport, in Tripura state, which has its boundary wall running along a heavily defended Bangladesh border, is getting extra security and a new terminal building.

“As it is a hyper sensitive airport, its sanctioned strength of security force will soon be increased from 224 to 330,” Shekhar Dev Burman, director of the airport told Jane’s.…

The operator of New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport is resisting a demand for USD90 million in demanded back payments from Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which has been securing the airport since 2003. While confirming the pending dues and calling it a very sensitive issue, the spokesperson of CISF told Jane’s Airport Review that the matter is being taken up by the central government ministry of civil aviation (MoCA) and ministry of home affairs.…

INDIAN livestock exporters are up in arms after the Indian government withdrew permission to export 25,000 goats and sheep from the western state of Gujarat just before the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha.

The animals were bound for slaughter in Gulf countries as part of the festivities, which involve copious consumption of meat.…

The Indian beauty and personal care industry is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 5.6% until 2022, according to research conducted by market analysis company Euromonitor International, down from the 9.1% year-on-year growth to USD14 billion that the sector reported in 2017.…

INDIA’S paint industry has been exempted from a mandatory biocide registration requirement under the national Insecticides Act (1968) if the biocides are used as a dry film preservative. However, new guidelines issued by Central Insecticide Board and Registration Committee (CIBRC) in June have told the Indian paint industry that they must use registered biocide products at recommended dosages, or protective labelling rules will kick in.…

PLAIN packaging rules, or approximations, are growing around the world, but the tobacco sector still argues that these controls are over-reaches that do not reduce smoking and instead encourage counterfeiting and smuggling.

Since January 2017, French smokers have been buying non-branded packs of cigarettes, seeing only a warning picture with text about how tobacco consumption affects people’s health, along with the name of the manufacturer in a simple typeface.…

DESPITE being the world’s third largest cashmere producer next to China and Mongolia, according to research from the University of California, Davis, Afghanistan’s cashmere industry is heavily underutilised, according to industry experts.

Afghanistan in the previous decade (to 2010) produced around 7% of the world’s raw (greasy) cashmere, after China (72%) and Mongolia (18%) say UC Davis researchers (see https://afghanag.ucdavis.edu/other-topics/files/market/chasmere-value-chain.pdf).…

THE ASIA-PACIFIC (APAC) region’s oil and gas sector faces an unprecedented level of decommissioning for which it is under-prepared and lacks experience, analysts have warned. Unclear regional government regulations coupled with a lack of local expertise mean that companies and regulators face a steep learning curve, high initial costs and the potential for mistakes, according to the consultancy group Wood Mackenzie’s latest analysis.…

THE FRENCH paint and varnishes industry saw sales decline for the third consecutive year in 2016, contracting by 1.6% year-on-year to EUR2.9 billion, according to market research company Euromonitor International. It believes, however, that business should pick up in the coming years due to rising construction of homes.…

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has launched an ‘Eat Right Movement’ to improve public health and combat disease linked to poor eating habits.

The programme will “nudge food businesses to reformulate their products, provide better nutritional information to consumers and make investments in healthy food as responsible food businesses,” said an FSSAI statement.…

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) will take over a controlling stake of Sri Lanka’s second international airport, Mattala Rajapaksa International. With few flights currently arriving ore departing. The AAI will have a 70% stake, with the remaining 30% expected to be owned by the Sri Lankan government, which would retain control over what airlines landed and departed from Mattala Rajapaksa, in southern Sri Lanka.…

The digital integration of Bangladesh’s booming textiles and garment sector is gaining pace, with ‘Industry 4.0’ becoming a watchword for becoming more competitive. One company that has been taking such technological development very seriously is the Dhaka-based DBL Group, which has targeted digital efficiencies to turbocharge its business growth. …

THE INDIAN government will help ensure Kannur International Airport, Kerala, southern India – now under construction – is opened by September (2018). Federal civil aviation minister Shri Suresh Prabhu has met with Kerala chief minister Shri Pinarayi Vijayan, later directing the Airport Authority of India and ministry officials “to take all possible steps to make Kannur Airport as a point of call for foreign airlines”.…

THE ASIA-Pacific technical textiles sector is still robust – with China’s industry continuing to grow, with bulk products still a focus. Meanwhile, more developed economies such as South Korea and Japan keep honing their output, looking for specialist niches and edges created by innovation.…

IN the USA alone, USD1.4 billion in counterfeit consumer products were seized in 2016 by the United States Customs and Border Protection, including 2,000 shipments of counterfeit cosmetics products. This, according to a note from USA-based Clarkston Consulting, cost the beauty industry at least USD75 million, which said: “Counterfeiting of consumer products remains on the rise” – see https://clarkstonconsulting.com/insights/counterfeit-cosmetics/counterfeit.…

PAINTS and coatings prices in India are expected to fall, with the government reducing the rate of goods and services tax (GST) levied on these products from 28% to 18%. “Over a period of six months the prices should go down and the overall industry should be moving ahead,” Ashwani Mehra, president of the Indian Paint and Coating Association in New Delhi told the Asia Pacific Coatings Journal.…

Dr Subodh Jindal, president of New Delhi based All India Food Processors’ Association, believes that a ban on single-use plastic will impact the food industry more than any other. He told just-food, “Let us not ridicule the good work plastic has done for the food industry.…

THE NEWLY signed 11-member Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) could help Vietnam boost garment and textile exports to the lucrative Australian market significantly. But the Asian clothing makers may still face big challenges in taking market share in this mature market away from China, experts warn. …

INDONESIAN President Joko Widodo’s drive to upgrade the country’s infrastructure is set to benefit the textile industry, but the problem of high energy costs remains an obstacle to competitiveness, industry players have warned.

Since taking office in October 2014, Widodo’s administration has embarked on ambitious projects to tackle infrastructure bottlenecks by building roads, ports, airports and power plants.…

PAKISTAN’S textile industry associations have urged their government to provide “an enabling environment” and relax import duties on raw materials to encourage exporters and boost value-addition for the country’s struggling textile industry.

Reacting to Sindh province governor Mohammad Zubair’s remarks in which he highlighted the importance of the industry adding value to its products to boost textile exports, association leaders say his comments are unfounded as manufacturers are doing their best but battling high production costs, against which they have campaigned long and hard.…

JOINING expertise from the public and private sector to combat money laundering or terrorism financing (TF) aided by virtual currencies (VCs) is the way forward, financial crime experts told MEPs at the June 18 meeting of the European Parliament’s special committee on terrorism.…

THE NONWOVENS sector has always been at the cutting edge of materials production, and so established developed economy manufacturers have often had the edge. But with global markets integrating, and emerging economies becoming increasingly sophisticated, new nonwovens manufacturing bases are growing all the time.…

India may have undertaken extreme demonetisation of higher value currency notes and closed more than 200,000 shell companies to curb money laundering and terrorism financing, but its progress against fighting ML and TF remains impeded. Of key concern, say AML/CFT experts are investigating agencies’ weak independence and deeply entrenched political corruption.…

The new realities of accelerating wage growth and the global shift towards placing smaller orders needs to be answered by Vietnam-based garment-makers by embracing technology-driven automation, according to ThreadSol, an India-based technology company. It supplies leading manufacturers in Vietnam with production software driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and Big Data.…

PAKISTAN’S law enforcers and regulators are on the front line when it comes to fighting terrorist financing, money laundering and financial crime in general, both within the country and from across its borders, notably conflict-riven Afghanistan. But its government and state agencies often send mixed messages over their commitment to fight terror finance.…

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious plan to make India free of single-use plastics by 2022 is impractical, Indian food industry players.

Mr Modi announced the scheme on World Environment Day on June 5, saying he would ensure all Indian states and territories banned their use by that year, starting with the capital New Delhi.…

MALAYSIA has long positioned itself as a higher-tech source of textile manufacturing and so it is maybe no surprise that it has been growing its digital textile printing segment.

That has been to the benefit of key Japan-based digital imaging and printing solution supplier Epson, which currently claims a Malaysian market share of 87% – based on data harvested last year (2017).…

ACHIEVING regulatory convergence in the USD465 billion global cosmetics industry (Euromonitor 2017 figures) is an important long-term goal, industry experts agreed at European personal care product association Cosmetics Europe’s June 13-14 annual conference 2018 in Brussels. Europe is a key market for this industry – providing EUR77.6 billion’s worth of personal care product sales last year, and supporting more than two million jobs, said Cosmetics Europe president Loïc Armand, also president of L’Oréal France.…

INDIAN confectionery makers are fearing a slump in sales due to the country’s new ‘traffic light’ food labelling regulation that mandates detailed nutrition information on the front of the pack, along with red dots to denote high sugar, salt or fat content.…

INDIA’S new Goods and Services Tax (GST) – designed to overhaul, modernise and harmonise the country’s indirect taxation – has been the focus of bitter criticism, over its chaotic and haphazard introduction and implementation.

Since its formal launch last July (2017), “changes have been made continually, and hence businesses found it difficult to keep pace,” says Mahadevan Subra Mani, senior director, Deloitte India, in Mumbai.…

The Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca is one of the five pillars of Islam, a religious duty every Muslim should perform once in their lifetime. But with 1.7 billion Muslims worldwide and the Hajj only occurring over five days every year, the event is a logistical challenge for the Saudi Arabian government, tour operators, hospitality service providers, retailers and accountants.…

THE HIMALAYAN kingdom of Bhutan may have a ban on smoking in public spaces under the Tobacco Control Act of 2010, but it is not hard to find smokers flouting this law. The legislation specified sporting centres as public spaces under the act, but when Tobacco Journal International visited the national stadium in the capital Thimphu to watch the opening game of this season’s Bhutan Pepsi Football League on April 21, it followed young fans walk to washroom at half-time to light up smuggled cigarettes.…

The Indian government has launched a disputes proceeding at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), protesting at the USA’s imposition of duties of 25% and 10% on imports of India-made steel and aluminium products.

New Delhi argues that the tariffs, imposed on March 23 by the Trump administration to protect and expand American aluminium and steel production, break the WTO’s General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its Agreement on Safeguards.…

AS China’s retreat from mass market clothing production continues, Bangladesh knitters are eyeing another added value knitwear niche – sportswear. Following the industry’s success in boosting sales within the profitable lingerie segment, Bangladesh manufacturers are ramping up production in sports apparels, although some experts say that work is needed on boosting its supply chain, particularly of manmade fibres.…

BANGLADESH has eased regulations for forming trade unions at garment factories in what appears to be a bid to appease the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

The government has decided to slash the requirement for workers’ consent to form trade unions from the previous 30% of a company’s workforce, to 20%.…

INDIA is building its biggest frozen semen station, housing 300 bulls of indigenous breeds of buffalo and cattle, with construction costs estimated at Indian Rupees INR640 million (USD 9.7 million) in Purnea, Bihar. When fully functional by May 2019, it would include bull shade areas, a semen processing lab, feed and warehousing, plus agricultural equipment and would supply five million doses of high quality semen every year to overcome national shortages.…

TECHNIQUES for using forensic linguistics to detect fraud continue to be refined as experts debate the best and most reliable way to use such technology and practices. Indeed, specialists continue to disagree over how forensic linguistics should be used in the anti-fraud arena.…

Unlike the limited range of minerals used in fossil fuel production, many minerals, metallic and nonmetallic, are used in renewable energy technologies. However, production is often low and concentrated in a limited number of countries – creating potential strategic supply problems.…

EUROPEAN Union (EU) food and drink exporters could be major beneficiaries of a revised EU-Mexico trade agreement which will remove almost all bilateral tariffs left by a year 2000 deal. Under a new agreement struck in principle, Mexican import duties on EU exports of cheeses, such as gorgonzola and roquefort, and pasta (of up to 20%), will be removed, along with duties on chocolate and confectionery, (that can exceed 20%).…

Enhancing the quality of passenger experience while maintaining maximum security was a recurring theme during the Dubai Airport Show 2018. The annual airport industry event, held from May 7 to 9, drew more than 7,500 visitors.

Covering 15,000 square metres of space across three halls of the iconic Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre, its 18^th edition hosted more than 350 exhibitors from 60 countries.…

INDIA’S ministry of civil aviation has said that progress is being made to build Noida International Greenfield Airport, in Uttar Pradesh, which will serve Noida, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gurugram and tourist centre Agra. The ministry approved the airport site last July (2017), with the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA) being appointed as the state government agency responsible for the project last October.…

INDIA’S information technology hub of Bengaluru (Bangalore) is equipping its Kempegowda International Airport with a new biometric-based passenger authentication system while undertaking a major expansion with a new terminal and a second runway.

The security check will utilise India’s nationwide unique ID ‘Aadhaar’ database, which has collected finger prints and iris scans from almost all the country’s adult population – more than 1 billion people, and which already authenticates bank accounts and telephone subscribers.…

A GROWING wave of sophisticated digital technologies and automation is helping the US apparel sector to produce custom-made, locally-manufactured, on-demand clothing, at a scale that some critics thought was never possible.

Atlanta US-based machine vision and Artificial Intelligence start-up SoftWear Automation Inc, which launched autonomous sewing worklines in 2012 after seven years of research – says it has successfully overcome this challenge.…

When Apple Inc released its iPhone X in November 2017, it took about a week until news broke that Vietnamese security firm Bkav cracked the phone’s revolutionary facial recognition security lock, Face ID, with a composite mask of 3D-printed plastic, silicone, makeup and simple paper cut-outs.…

Diversity – a theme very close to Mohamed Irshad’s heart – could not be embodied by a more appropriate person than the affable, youthful-looking 34-year-old head of global internal audit – the Americas, at French multinational Schneider Electric. Irshad is an Indian national who was born and raised in Dubai, studied in India, has lived in Paris and is now based in Canada.…

EXPERTS have expressed mixed reactions on how a proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), now years in the making, could help revive the garment and textile sector in South East Asia.

The 16-member bloc that includes the 10 ASEAN member countries (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) and six other countries – Australia New Zealand, China, India, Japan and South Korea – have been negotiating the deal since November 2012.…

THE ORGANISERS of Italy’s premier beauty trade fair, Cosmoprof Worldwide Bologna, are claiming a record number of visitors and international buyers attending this year’s 51st edition of the event from March 15-19. Exceeding the 250,000 visitors from last year’s Cosmoprof, attending foreign buyers, distributors and retail representatives grew 11% in 2018, year-on-year.…

PAKISTAN’S textile industry has demanded more incentives and concessions from the government in its upcoming 2018-19 budget through lower taxes and electricity bills, and speedy repayment of tax refunds, encouraging growth in the sector.

The All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) has dispatched a 30-page bundle of proposals to the government calling for them to be incorporated in the federal budget – likely to be unveiled on April 27.…

India’s petrochemicals industry is preparing to exploit its growth potential and can benefit from lessons learned in Europe. Indeed, India’s intertwined petrochemicals and refining sectors received a significant endorsement of their future potential in April 2018 in the shape of major foreign investment in what will be one of the world’s biggest integrated sites for these twin purposes.…

NORTH Africa is never an easy market in which to do business, and the Arab Spring and its turbulent aftermath has not helped ease trade, but as the paint industry looks to 2018, there is optimism that profits can be made.…

The South Pacific’s Cook Islands (population: 11,700) and Niue (population: 1,600), both largely autonomous jurisdictions in free association with New Zealand, have in the past been accused by international AML experts as being tax havens that facilitate money laundering. But reforms indicate that AML/CFT controls are tightening.…

FIVE years after the Rana Plaza disaster, Bangladesh’s apparel industry has undergone expensive structural transformation, but a fair price for garment producers remains elusive, industry-insiders and trade unionists say.
The Dhaka-based Envoy Group, which spent between USD2 million and USD2.5 million on a health and safety makeover following the tragedy accepts it was “a turning point in taking the industry to the next level”, said Abdus Salam Murshedy, Envoy’s managing director.…

An Indian government plan to adopt a new food labelling regulation that mandates detailed nutrition information on the front of packaging in a fixed format is being bitterly opposed by the industry.

Subod Jindal, president of All India Food Processors’ Association, in New Delhi, accused the Indian authorities of “damaging the sector”, adding: “They are hell bent on doing it.” …

INDIA’S ministry of civil aviation has said that progress is being made to build Noida International Greenfield Airport, in Uttar Pradesh, which will serve Noida, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gurugram and tourist centre Agra. The ministry approved the airport site last July (2017), with the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA) being appointed as the state government agency responsible for the project last October.…

International activity to understand and potentially extract natural gas from methane hydrates has intensified since 2010 with the continuation and launch of new research and development (R&D) projects and field production tests offshore and onshore, as shown in a new overview by Carolyn D Ruppel, chief of the gas hydrates project at the United States Geological Survey (USGS).(1)…

India’s new Goods and Services Tax (GST) system has severely disrupted tax refund payments and duty drawbacks to exporters, leading to higher production costs and a 30% dip in knitwear exports, experts have warned.

Since its adoption in July 2017, the new value added tax system has been criticised for its complexity – with the knitwear sector having to deal with four separate tax brackets – and forcing small business to invest in online accounting infrastructure that they cannot afford and are ill equipped to manage.…

PROPOSED regulations to introduce traffic light health labelling for food products in Indian schools have infuriated the leader of the country’s processed food industry association. He has warned that the law could force manufacturers to use the system for entire ranges of their products, regardless of where they are sold, including jams, juices, butter, pickles and Indian condiments, as well as basic recipe ingredients such as meat and vegetables.…

REPRESENTATIVES of the USA fashion and apparel industries, along with most of the country’s business community and Congressional leadership, are voicing concern about President Donald Trump’s March 1 announcement that he intends to impose additional tariffs on all imports of steel and aluminium.…

A PUBLIC row has broken out between non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in India and the country’s poultry industry over the vexed issue of the use of antibiotics on Indian farms. The All India Poultry Development and Services Pvt Ltd (AIPDS), an industry body based in southern state of Karnataka has been angered by public statements made by the Mobius Foundation, a New Delhi-based NGO (https://www.facebook.com/Mobiusfoundation/).…

THE HONG Kong financial secretary has proposed a 75% reduction of profits tax, salaries tax and tax under personal assessment for the 2017-18 assessment year, up to Hong Kong dollars HKD30,000 (USD3,820) per case. In his annual budget speech, Paul Chan also proposed widening tax bands, adding one more (HKD150,000 to HKD200,000); adjusting marginal tax rates for salaries tax; introducing a personal disability allowance; increasing basic, additional child allowances, dependent parent/grandparent allowance and additional allowance.…

THE INDIAN perfumery and cosmetics sector is facing increased taxation and shortage of raw material supplies even as it is yet to cope with the functioning of the country’s new Goods and Services Tax (GST).

In the national budget presented on February 1, Indian finance minister Arun Jaitley doubled the customs duties for cosmetic and toiletry preparation products from 10% to 20% “to provide adequate protection to the domestic industry”.…

PAKISTAN’S government is considering a fresh package of incentives for the country’s exporters, including the key textile and clothing sector, which is particularly interested in the fact officials are examining reducing energy bills. Industry insiders have long argued high energy costs in Pakistan are one of the key factors for increasing production expenses, reducing competitivity and hence overseas sales.…

THE MALAYSIAN textile industry is pinning hopes on a government decision to reintroduce an export-targeted grant to revive the sector’s declining overseas business.  

The decision to reintroduce the Market Development Grant, offered to SMEs, was announced during the 2018 national budget unveiled in October 2017.…

THE IMPORTANCE of Brazil as the world’s top supplier of internationally-traded tobacco leaf and manufactured products has been waning for the past decade, with India, notably, improving its position. New statistical analysis released by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) shows that this market share fall for Brazil also represented a decline in volume sales, given the global trade in tobacco leaf and products has shrunk since 2013 – until 2016, the year for which the latest data is available.…

Saudi Arabia is pushing ahead with ambitious plans to build 16 nuclear reactors, both small and large, to generate 17GWe by 2040. While no tenders have yet been awarded, the kingdom is working with numerous international partners to develop its nuclear infrastructure and safety systems.…

INDIA’S 12 newly sanctioned nuclear reactors with 9,000-megawatt (MW) capacity may use imported fuel, but most of the equipment will be made in India, government officials have told Fuel Cycle Week.

“We will see what is the maximum [amount of fuel] we can get from within the country and then what will be the external input of fuel,” Malur Ramaswamy Srinivasan, member of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, told Fuel Cycle Week.…

IF there is a quality that gives many Israeli companies an edge internationally, it is innovation. And this trait can certainly be said to run through the work of Israeli apparel major Delta Galil, based in Caesarea, northern Israel.

“We could not succeed if we were not innovative” said Isaac Dabah, the company’s CEO of Delta Galil, in an exclusive interview with just-style, held at his office.…

With China losing its sheen as a low-cost manufacturing heartland, Bangladesh’s clothing exporters are tapping into this opportunity by diversifying into another new higher margin segment — suits.

Senior executives and analysts told just-style how potential larger profits are drawing in major manufacturers, who are now confronting the challenges of building technical knowhow, recruiting skilled labour and attracting global buyers available. …

CLOTHING and textile companies are grappling with new good practice guidance in supply chain management that was released by the Organisation for Economic Development & Cooperation (OECD) last May (2017). An OECD Forum on Due Diligence in the Garment and Footwear Sector was staged in Paris last month (January 30-31), attended by governments, businesses, trade unions and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working within or having an impact on the apparel sector.…

MAJOR shifts in the power of exporting countries within the meat and livestock sector in the past decade have been identified in new statistical analysis released by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The global body has noted how India between 2006 and 2016 became a bovine meat export power house (notably in buffalo meat) with overseas sales rising from 79,400 tonnes (1.9% of world exports) to 1.2 million tonnes (18.7%) and the world’s largest exporter to boot.…

LEADING Indian bank, the Punjab National Bank (PNB), has been embroiled in a USD1.77 billion fraud scandal that has highlighted oversight failings by the country’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The scandal linked to Indian jewelry billionaire Nirav Modi took place at just one Mumbai branch of the state-owned PNB, involved fraudulent transactions between 2011 and 2017, using the international bank transfer system, SWIFT.…

THE FUTURE of materials in this carbon-averse world is all about lightweighting. But quality and safety must be maintained. Nowhere is this truer than with the aerospace textiles segment, where durability, toughness and flexibility is allied with low weights, of importance when civil aviation operators are under pressure to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.…

CONSUMERS do not like sales tax, and they are particularly sensitive to tax-based price increases when new taxes are introduced. So, it is maybe no surprise that personal care product sales in the Middle East have been dampened by the introduction of value added tax (VAT) in both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in January 2018, inflating beauty product prices.…

SALES of cosmetics and toiletries in the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) may be steady, but these developed markets are shifting amid growing diversity in distribution. Products are increasingly bought online and in non-traditional channels such as budget, lifestyle and fashion stores.…

PAKISTAN’S textile exporters have urged their government to speed up and

enhance a tax incentives package if they are to kick

start the country’s ailing textile sector.

The government has rolled out a series of incentives over the past year, including the abolition of a 4% customs duty and 5% sales tax imposed on import of raw cotton announced on January 5 (in force on January 8), meeting a long-standing demand of the textile sector. …

Birla Cellulose’s LIVA Spring Summer 2019 collection, to be showcased at the Première Vision Paris show on February 13-15 this year, is high on innovations in weaves and knits that create a unique tactile feel that is luxurious and opulent, while also being lightweight.…

THE GLOBAL speciality chemical market has been showing steady gains over the past few years and is set to continue in its growth trajectory, according to latest data. According to data from Pune, India-based global research company Allied Market Research, the global industry was worth USD175.4 billion in 2014 and has since shown promising growth to USD184 billion in 2015, USD193 billion in 2016 and USD202.5 billion in 2017.…

India’s Reliance Industries (RIL) has launched operations of what it claims to be the world’s largest refinery off-gas cracker complex, at its integrated refinery-petrochemicals facility at Jamnagar, Gujarat. With a capacity of 1.5 million tonnes per annum (MMTPA), the unit will make ethylene to be used in downstream plants to produce mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) and polyethylene (PE).…

INDIA’S fast-growing consumer goods company Patanjali Ayurved has confirmed to just-food that it is considering a foreign investment offers of USD800 million by French luxury group LVMH, but stresses it is not the only foreign investment offer it has received.

Patanjali spokesperson S K Tijarawala explained to just-food how such foreign inputs meshed with its overall strategy of developing and selling products that are based on Hindu traditions such as Ayurvedic lines.…

HOW will the Indian food industry evolve in the next decade? If the last decade was about India opening up to the global palate, the next decade is definitely about health and wellness, industry executives said at the India Food Forum 2018, held at Mumbai from January 17 to 19.…

High on the agenda of Dr Oetker India managing director and chief executive officer Oliver Mirza is making India a major production hub, not just for manufacturing packaged foods scoring sales in India’s growing markets, but also for exports.

In a wide-ranging interview with just-food on the sidelines of the India Food Forum, staged in Mumbai last month (January 17-19), Mirza said that by 2020, Dr Oetker India was targeting sales of Indian Rupees INR10 billion (USD155 million) of which its sub-brand FunFoods will account for INR5 billion (USD 77.50 million).…

A ONE-stop shop has been opened, integrating controls for air cargo routed through Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, Afghanistan. The goal is simplifying complex customs procedures hampering the export of goods by air. The unit will integrate administration required by the Afghanistan customs department; the ministries of finance; information and culture; mines and petroleum; public health; agriculture, irrigation, and livestock; and the Afghanistan National Standards Authority.…

THE INDIAN government has said USD4.1 billion needs to be raised to build eight planned greenfield airports. Ashok Gajapathi Raju, India’s civil aviation minister, has told the Indian parliament that these airports, namely Mopa, in Goa; Navi Mumbai (a township near India’s commercial capital) and Sindhudurg, in Maharashtra; Bhogapuram and Dagadarthi, in Andhra Pradesh; Hasan, in Karnataka; Kannur, in Kerala; and Dholera, in Gujarat, would be built through public-private partnerships (PPP) by the respective state governments.…

India has been identifying and registering all livestock breeds in the country, a process that could benefit the local meat industry with increased production and higher quality meat, Global Meat News (GMN) has been told.

“India has an enormous diversity of livestock and at every 200 to 300 km we find a different population of every species,” said Arjava Sharma, director of National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources (NBAGR) in Karnal, Haryana.…

DEFERRED Prosecution Agreements (DPAs), that allow companies and individuals that admit to wrongdoing and cooperate with investigators to pay a fine and avoid prosecution, are becoming increasingly common worldwide. Enabling wrongdoers to avoid being debarred from bidding for many contracts and providing law enforcers with a commitment that companies and individual fraudsters will avoid fraud in future, DPAs offer benefits for police and suspects.…

*The European Union (EU) Council of Ministers has published a blacklist of jurisdictions it thinks do not cooperate sufficiently with international efforts to reduce tax evasion. They are American Samoa, Bahrain, Barbados, Grenada, Guam, South Korea, Macau, the Marshall Islands, Mongolia, Namibia, Palau, Panama, Saint Lucia, Samoa, Trinidad & Tobago, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).…

THE HUMAN resources sector has been urged to put pressure on governments and investment fund managers in Asia to strengthen pension provisions as they deal with the consequences of rapidly aging populations.

And HR and economics experts have warned that corporate HR teams have a critical role to play in educating the workforce about the extent, however limited, of their pension provision and working with company bosses to strengthen policies within their organisations to compensate for the lack of robust schemes in existence.…

Saudi Arabia’s efforts to liberalise its society and economy are positively affecting the local beauty market. Ever since the global plunge in oil prices that led to the shrinking of the state’s budget, the kingdom’s government has embarked upon major economic reform.…

It has been weeks since quotas limiting European Union (EU) sugar production were scrapped on September 30, and while its impact has yet to become clear, experts agree that EU output will rise, at least in the short term. The EU executive, the European Commission is predicting that EU sugar production will increase 20% in the coming year.…

MAJOR multinational corporations holding large volumes of client data and those offering cloud computing services are facing the risk of increased demands that they share records with regulators and law enforcers. Countries are preparing to ease and expedite data sharing for criminal investigations with foreign law enforcement authorities, and this can affect emerging markets as much as developed economies.…

RAJIV Gandhi International Airport (RGIA), Hyderabad, has become India’s first airport to install waste recycling machines. In a pilot project, the machines have been installed to crush plastic bottles, steel and aluminium cans, plus plastic bags, said operator GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd.…

Africa governments are waking up to the fact that the continent could be a ‘new frontier’ for clothing manufacturing sourcing, export associations and manufacturers at Destination Africa, a trade event in Cairo, Egypt, have told just-style.

They stressed that Africa has significant opportunities to divert manufacturing from Asia due to rising production costs, especially in China, and take advantage of the proximity to European markets.…

African clothing exporting countries are banking on rising costs in China and changing consumption patterns worldwide to attract buyers to the continent to take advantage of lower production costs.

Major hurdles abound, but manufacturers are hopeful that clothing facilities built from scratch that abide by international best practices will help the continent’s apparel sector develop.…

India’s denim major Arvind Ltd has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the government of western Indian state Gujarat enabling the manufacturer to set up a large state-of-the-art apparel unit that should be operational before March 2019.

Kulin Lalbhai, one of the two executive directors of Arvind Ltd, told just-style: “This is an MoU we have signed with…Gujarat to set up a major apparel factory in Dahegam, near Ahmedabad, which, over time, will employ 10,000 people.”…

EGYPT is trying to develop its upstream textile capabilities to bolster exports and be part of an integrated African continent-wide supply chain, linking its cut-and-sew and quality cotton fibre base. While Egypt exported USD764 million worth of fabric and yarn in 2016 according to the country’s Textile Export Council (TEC), challenges abound regarding Egypt’s efforts to generate more value-added textiles.…

SPECIALITY textile producers in Indonesia are seeking increased investment as demand in the automotive, construction and furnishings sectors is soaring, according to industry experts.

“There’s a lot of demand and more investment is being directed toward that technical textile production,” said Redma Wirawasta, secretary general of the Association of Synthetic Fiber Producers (APSyFI).…

THE MAURITIUS textile and clothing industry is facing tough times, with exports falling amidst unfavourable currency shifts. Clothing and textile exports by value to all destinations fell by 9% in 2016, according to the Mauritius Export Association (MEXA), which has noted such sales declines have been happening for the last five years in key export markets.…

AFTER introducing digital printing and leading Bangladesh’s knitwear sector by example, the country’s knitting major, the Knit Concern Group, has said it will ramp up its capacity to digitally print 1 million metres of fabric monthly by 2022. Presently, the knitter, based in Narayanganj, near Dhaka, can digitally print 260,000 metres of fabric a month.…

Multinationals and suppliers in the personal care product sector are unilaterally implementing measures to reduce their carbon footprint in the wake of the 2015 Paris climate treaty, taking steps to reduce energy use, their impact on forests and cutting water use and pollution.…

India’s robust cosmetics and personal care industry, that according to the Indian Beauty & Hygiene Association (IBHA) generated annual sales of USD8 billion in 2016, is facing severe supply chain disruption and the closure of smaller brands. Continuous double digit annual growth registered during the last decade by the industry – noted by figures from the ministry of commerce’s India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) – has now been severely disrupted by a series of radical regulatory measures.…

THE UNITED Arab Emirates (UAE) has long been a fertile ground for colour cosmetics brands thanks to its large young population (its median age is just over 30) and the presence of image conscious consumers. Despite the pressure of rising costs and fierce competition among brands, the country’s colour cosmetics market experienced moderate growth in 2017 compared to 2016, increasing an estimated 4% in value terms to reach Emirati Dirham AED1.1 billion (USD299.4 million), according to market researcher Euromonitor International.…

THE PAINT and coatings industry in south Asia maybe thriving, but regional trade between countries is not – being restricted to exports of pigments, resins, solvents and additives from India to its neighbouring countries. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Maldives, Bhutan and Afghanistan, as well as regional giant India, are all members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), but they import most of their paint and coating raw materials.…

IT is a spectacular sight from the top of Dubai’s 68-storey Almas Tower, with the sea on one side and the massive development of Jumeirah Lake Towers (JLT) on the other. For Jignesh Sanghvi, chief financial officer of the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC), the panoramic views from the skyscraper are a constant reminder of the magnitude of development the government-sponsored free zone has witnessed over the years.…

THE PAKISTAN textile industry is worried that a potential trade free trade deal with Thailand, now under discussion, may cause more harm than good to Pakistani manufacturers. Thai and Pakistan government negotiators are preparing for what maybe the final round of talks to forge a free trade agreement (FTA) between these two textile producing countries, with a deal potentially being signed in January.…

THE PRODUCTION of Thai silk is rising fast as demand for this luxury fabric increases worldwide. Thailand is the fourth largest producer of silk in the world, having produced 202,073 tonnes in 2015, as reported by the International Sericultural Commission. Thai silk output has increased from 2011’s 130, 286 tonnes; rising to 2012’s 152,910 tonnes; 159,737 tonnes in 2013; and 178,058 tonnes in 2014.…

TEXTILE mill owners in Pakistan have expressed doubts over their government’s apparent enthusiasm to develop joint ventures (JVs) with their Chinese counterparts to boost dwindling export levels.

Pakistan’s textile minister, Pervaiz Malik, said at the 18th Textile Asia International Exhibition in Lahore recently that his government wants JVs with the Chinese textile sector and for his country to become a textile business hub for the Middle East, central and south Asia.…

THE INDIAN automobile manufacturing industry, which already has an annual output of 25 million vehicles, is bracing itself for a comprehensive switchover to electric vehicles, with the government developing clear policy that it wants combustion engines off the country’s roads. 

This push has been grounded in a report from the government’s key think tank NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India), which is headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and hence very influential.…

VIETNAM’S textile and clothing and textile sector is looking to sell more product into Asian markets such as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Japan, while solidifying its traditional export bases like the US and EU, the latest trade data indicates. 

Last year, Vietnam exported USD2.28 billion’s worth of clothing and textiles to South Korea – a 7.45% gain compared with 2015, according to Vietnam customs data analysed by the Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association (VITAS). …

WHILE there is little doubt that the Asian fire resistant coating market is large – indeed New Jersey-based chemical consultancy Growney Kusumgar, Nerfli & Growny has argued that it is several times larger than that of the USA’s USD100 million-market – marketers can struggle to make sales. …

THE AUSTRALIAN cosmetic and toiletry retailing market has experienced modest growth amidst fierce competition over the past decade, figures reveal, with a constant stream of new products, many environmentally conscious, maintaining consumer interest in an otherwise saturated market.

According to California-based market research company IBISWorld, more than 18,000 people work in almost 4,000 businesses in the cosmetics industry in Australia, a country of more than 24 million people.…

BANGLADESH’S government is considering proposals to establish a new national workplace health and safety system to replace the international Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, which are due to be wound up next June (2018).…

With almost 900 million people around the globe lacking access to safe drinking water and predictions that within less than 10 years, half the world’s population will live in ‘water-stressed’ conditions, the need for cost-effective efficient nonwovens-based filtration has never been greater.…

AS Singapore’s talent shortages begin to impact on business prospects, new opportunities are emerging for HR to play a lead role in aligning workforce planning with business strategy.

A recent report (released August 17) by the talent outsourcing firm KellyOCG, conducted across Singapore, India, Australia and Malaysia, found the majority of senior ‘C-suite’ level executives (61%) expected talent shortages to have a negative impact on their business going forward.…

INDONESIAN textile factories must improve their production of motif designs and colours to satisfy domestic consumers and boost local sales, said textile retailers at south-east Asia’s busiest garment and textile market in Jakarta’s Tanah Abang district. “We expect producers make more unique textile motifs, so customers will have more choices, which they will like,” said Eryanto, a trader who has been working for about 11 years at the Arjuna Bombay textile shop at Tanah Abang Block A market.…

Ashok Rajani said this July’s (2017) launch by AEPC of an Indian Apparel Industry Sustainability Programme (AISA) was important because incorporating sustainability in apparel production systems is no longer a choice but a necessity.

This is not just because of compliance with legislative reforms tightening controls on the environment and pollution, he said, but because of growing awareness among consumers and buyers increasing demand for sustainable products.…

WITH hacking an ever-present and growing threat to the security of commercially confidential – and especially financial – information, companies are being encouraged to hold their noses and invest in ethical hacking to secure their financial systems. This is especially the case now that more business is conducted via cloud-based systems.…

A MAJOR international anti-counterfeiting action ‘Operation Renegade’ did not just seize more than 70,000 counterfeit auto spare parts, oil and air filters, grills, and fuel pumps, and nearly 600 cylinders of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerants, it yielded valuable anti-smuggling and counterfeiting information.…

JAPAN’S paint and coatings sector is putting on a positive face and playing up overseas expansion efforts, as well as its traditional strength in innovation, but analysts are concerned about the longer-term outlook for domestic companies.

Sales of paint in Japan came to Japanese Yen JPY 675 billion (USD6.10 billion) in 2016, a marginal increase of around 1% on the previous year’s figure, according to the Japan Paint Manufacturers Association.…

CONFECTIONARY manufacturers in India are having to grapple with their products and ingredients attracting a wide range of tax rates under the country’s new goods and services tax (GST), which started to be levied from July 1.

India’s GST Council, a body representing the central and state governments, has been deciding which goods will be covered by the zero, 5%, 12%, 18% and 28% tax rates allowed under India’s GST legislation. …

QATAR is a small country, roughly half the size of Wales and with a population of 2.5 million. But what it lacks in demography and geography, it makes up for in spending power – and its significant cosmetic surgery industry is a key beneficiary.…

A YOUNG population with high disposable incomes coupled with a booming medical tourism sector has created an ongoing demand for cosmetic procedures in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Dubai especially dominates this important market, being a global luxury-centric city with world-class medical infrastructure.…

India’s Heritage Foods and France’s Novandie will be investing Indian Rupees INR160 million (USD2.5 million) in building a yoghurt manufacturing facility in Maharashtra as part of a 50-50 joint venture. “The plant would be set up in western region, in the vicinity of Mumbai or Pune and will start production next year (2018),” a company spokesperson told just-food.…

India’s consumer goods company Marico Ltd, which markets multigrain flake breakfast cereals, Saffola healthy oat-based snacks and cooking oil, has told just-food how it plans to develop new healthy breakfast, in-between meals and snack lines that fit its wholesome lifestyle branding.…

THE CHAIRMAN of India’s Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC) has told just-style how a new national sustainability programme will help Indian clothing exporters become more competitive.

Ashok Rajani said this July’s (2017) launch by AEPC of an Indian Apparel Industry Sustainability Programme (AISA) was important because incorporating sustainability in apparel production systems is no longer a choice but a necessity
This is not just because of compliance with legislative reforms tightening controls on the environment and pollution, he said, but because of growing awareness among consumers and buyers increasing demand for sustainable products.…

AS Ethiopia rapidly emerges as a key clothing and textile hub of Africa, the country has been making impressive strides as a knitwear manufacturing and sourcing centre, attracting the attention of global clothing majors.

“International buyers are beginning to buy knitted clothes from Ethiopia including Zara, Tesco, H&M [Hennes & Mauritz] and Decathlon,” said Fassil Tadesse, president of the Ethiopian Textile and Garment Manufacturing Association (ETGAMA).…

SINGAPORE has been rated the best city in the world to live for professionals wanting to work in start-ups, according to a survey by furnished apartment web-rental platform Nestpick. The website’s researchers assessed 85 cities, looking at their start-up ecosystems. It assessed average salaries for entry level and experienced positions regarding project management, technology and marketing roles.…

Birla Cellulose, India’s world leading manufacturer of artificial cellulose fibres, has told Twist International how it plans to incorporate new consumer trends and desires linking individualism and community in its autumn and winter 2018/19 collection. It will be showcased at the Première Vision show, at Paris, in September (2017).…

CHINESE customers bought 28 million vehicles in 2016, up 7.3% from 2015, which saw a year-on-year growth of 4.7%, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. However, such sales were largely stimulated by tax incentives released by the Chinese government in 2015 to encourage the sales of low-emission cars.…

Amid concerns about a growing shortage of workers in Russia’s textile industry, leading companies are looking to recruit staff from India, China and other emerging market nations.

According to latest data from the Russian ministry of industry and trade, the current vacancy rate across the country’s textile industry is 36%.…

Leather exporters in the north Indian production hub of Kanpur (in Uttar Pradesh) are facing closure of their tanneries over environmental concerns, even as they are trying to overcome the shortage of raw hides and loss of business to Brazilian companies.…

INDIA’S hopes of capturing more business within the international textile market lay in expanding its man-made fibre (MMF) production, experts suggested at the three-day Textiles India 2017 exhibition that concluded in Gujarat, on July 2. This, combined with innovative product design, improved labour laws, quick delivery systems and drastically improved logistics, could help Indian textile and clothing producers become a more important sourcing hub for the industry worldwide, said speakers at the event.…

The European Commission will press trading partners at this week’s July 7-8 G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, to remove unfair obstacles to European Union imports, after a EU report detailed such restrictions, many affecting clothing and textile trades.

Referring to the Commission’s latest annual Report on Trade and Investment Barriers (TIBR), EU trade Commissioner Cecilia Malström warned G20 leaders it was prepared to launch World Trade Organisation cases if necessary: “We are taking action.…

INDIA’S hopes of capturing more business within the international textile market lay in expanding its man-made fibre (MMF) production, experts suggested at the three-day Textiles India 2017 exhibition that concluded in Gujarat, on July 2. This, combined with innovative product design, improved labour laws, quick delivery systems and drastically improved logistics, could help Indian textile and clothing producers become a more important sourcing hub for the industry worldwide, said speakers at the event.…

PUBLIC authorities in the south Asian island nation of Maldives are themselves developing the country’s main Ibrahim Nasir International Airport, after a dispute with India’s GMR Group ended in a costly arbitration ruling.

This dated back to 2010 when GMR Male International Airport Ltd (GMIAL), a subsidiary of India’s GMR Infrastructure Ltd, signed a concession agreement with the Maldives government and the Maldives Airport Company Ltd (MACL) to modernise and operate the airport.…

WITH the Asia-Pacific continuing to be the hub of global industrial growth and also a nexus of technological innovation, the region’s non-wovens sector has been making the most of these benefits, increasing both output and quality.

The Chinese nonwoven fabric sector, for instance, has been growing steadily, with 8-10% year-on-year growth in recent years, surpassing the average growth rate of the country’s entire textile industry.…

THE TRADE deal announced by the European Union (EU) and Japanese on July 6 that would cut tariffs and harmonise technical regulations has been welcomed by Japan and EU auto-makers – although the Europeans are expressing caution.

Brussels and Tokyo said they had stuck a “political agreement in principle” for an economic partnership agreement, that would phase out vehicle tariffs over seven years and bring regulatory convergence through a special auto annex. …

The European Commission will press trading partners at this week’s July 7-8 G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, to remove unfair obstacles to European Union imports, after a EU report detailed such restrictions, many affecting clothing and textile trades.

Referring to the Commission’s latest annual Report on Trade and Investment Barriers (TIBR), EU trade Commissioner Cecilia Malström warned G20 leaders it was prepared to launch World Trade Organisation cases if necessary: “We are taking action.…

PAKISTAN’S ministry of industries and production has granted Category-A Greenfield investment status to four automobile manufacturing investors to set up manufacturing plants – effectively greenlighting their projects to establish auto-making plants in the country.

Shah Jahan Shah, spokesperson for Pakistan’s ministry of industries and production said he ministry had signed an agreement with these July 17 (2017).…

ORGANISERS of a major three-day India Textile 2017 exhibition in Gujarat have hoped to use the event to encourage product diversification and better supply chain links within the country’s growing textile sector.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s oft quoted maxim – ‘from farm to fibre, fibre to fabric, fabric to fashion and fashion to foreign markets’ – was the guiding principle for the event that concluded in Gujarat’s capital Gandhinagar on July 2.…

THE POLITICAL standoff between India and Pakistan may dominate the news headlines but India’s synthetic textiles, yarn and fibre are starting to find an increasing number of Pakistani buyers.

According to Kripabar Baruah, joint director, Synthetic and Rayon Textile Export Promotion Council (SRTEPC), exports to Pakistan that had fallen in 2014-5, and 2015-6, have grown in the current financial year (2016-17).…

Russia and three Gulf countries are planning to establish an aluminium industry association whose goal is reducing overproduction in the global market, raising prices for the metal.

Despite the ongoing diplomatic standoff between Qatar and its neighbours, the Russian government says it has already started talks with the governments of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar, regarding establishing the new association.…

Donald Trump’s decision to pull the USA out of the Paris Climate Treaty has been universally viewed as a setback for moves to decarbonise the world electricity sector. Trump called for a new “fair” deal that would not disadvantage US businesses and workers and claimed that China and India had “no meaningful obligations” placed on them by the deal.…

Russia and three Gulf countries are planning to establish an aluminium industry association whose goal is reducing overproduction in the global market, raising prices for the metal.

Despite the ongoing diplomatic standoff between Qatar and its neighbours, the Russian government says it has already started talks with the governments of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar, regarding establishing the new association.…

There is no sign that Taiwanese textile investors will rethink their commitment to Vietnam six months after US President Donald Trump pulled America out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement that would have greatly boosted Vietnamese garment exports to the USA.…

PAKISTAN’S textile industry, including manufacturers of fabric, yarn, and garments, suspended production and organised protests nationwide on June 20, dubbing the protest ‘Black Tuesday’, over the government’s slow implementation of a promised USD1.7 billion relief package for the sector.

The All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) organised the day of action, supported by the Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers & Exporters Association (PRGMEA), All Pakistan Bedsheets And Upholstery Manufacturers Association (APBUMA), the All Pakistan Textile Processing Mills Association (APTPMA), the All Pakistan Cotton Power Looms Association, the Council of Loom Owners Association and other groups. …

Global India-based textile conglomerate the Aditya Birla Group, a world leader in viscose staple fibre, was the ‘platinum sponsor’ of a Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) meeting held in Bengaluru (Bangalore), India from May 22 – 23. This was an important conclave in the California-based SAC, as it approaches a 2020 deadline to develop its Higg Index, a suite of self-assessment tools enabling brands, retailers and manufacturers to measure their environmental, social and labour impact.…

THE BURGEONING automotive manufacturing sector of central Europe’s Slovakia is paying close attention to an inquiry by the European Union (EU) executive, the European Commission, into how its government supports the sector. The upcoming decision by the Commission, which has powers to ensure national governments do not distort the EU’s single market by subsidising local industrial champions, could have significant implication for the future of Slovakia’s auto sector.…

IN HONG KONG, the average expatriate pay package for a middle manager has hit a five-year low – having fallen to USD 265,487 in 2016, from USD 270,618 in 2012. And this follows a dramatic increase in the number of workers (including expats) seeking to change jobs this year blaming low pay, industry experts warned quoting two separate surveys.…

THE INDIAN knitwear industry will have to pay a wide range of rates for the incoming Goods and Services Tax (GST) rates when the new tax is introduced from July 1 (2017).

This tax is supposed to simplify how businesses pay sales taxes in India, replacing a series of national, state and local charges, but a national GST Council has set a wide range of rates for knitwear products and inputs.…

Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris Climate Treaty will not halt moves to cut fossil fuels or reduce decarbonisation requirements on the non-energy minerals sector and other industries, say experts.

Trump called for a new “fair” deal that would not disadvantage US businesses and workers and claimed that China and India had “no meaningful obligations” placed on them by the agreement.…

More than 70,000 synthetic textile traders in the India’s textile hub of Surat, Gujarat, are on five days strike until June 30, to protest against the country’s new Goods and Services Tax (GST) system, which comes into force on July 1.…

THE Indian processed food industry has welcomed the government’s decision to reduce the newly announced Goods and Services Tax rates on several food products from 18% to 12%.

Last Sunday (11 June), India’s GST Council – comprising central and state governments –  agreed to revise the new tax rates for pickles, chutney, sauces, instant food; mixes; curry paste; mayonnaise and salad dressings; mixed condiments and mixed seasonings bringing it down to 12%.…

A sudden shortage of leather in India prompted by government religious policies on reducing cattle-related trades is forcing major fashion brands to look for alternative sourcing destinations. Even Indian fashion goods exporters are having to buy costly imports of raw leather to service existing orders.…

India’s Ready Roti, makers of Harvest Gold bread, is planning a major expansion with new products following a 65% stake sale to Mexico’s Grupo Bimbo. Rajan Makani, deputy general manager, brands, for Ready Roti in New Delhi told just-food that the deal “will be beneficial for Indian consumers”, with the tie up sparking the launch of “many new products”. …

Greek savoury snacks specialist company Chipita has refused to confirm or deny reports that it plans to build a new plant for its products in Slovakia. The company told just-food.com that “it is interested in many markets (including Slovakia) and is constantly looking for opportunities.…

THE EUROPEAN Commission has reported that wines and spirits were the subject of more new foreign trade barriers to EU exports during 2016 than any other sector. Its ‘2016 trade and investment barriers report’ said there were seven such new restrictions.…

Intrusion by unidentified drones in and around Indian airports has been causing security scares as experts warn of serious threats to approaching or departing aircraft. The risks are an indication of what can happen when regulators try to restrict an air navigation hazard with heavy handed rules.…

Intrusion by unidentified drones in and around Indian airports has been causing security scares as experts warn of serious threats to approaching or departing aircraft. The risks are an indication of what can happen when regulators try to restrict an air navigation hazard with heavy handed rules.…

CONCERN has been raised by Indian anti-fraud professionals about the quality of fraud surveys published by major accounting and consultancy firms in their country. Commenting on reports issued by companies such as KPMG, Kroll, E&Y (Ernst & Young) and PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers), anti-fraud specialists such as Mayur Joshi, director of Indiaforensic Consultancy Services (ICS) in Pune, Maharashtra, claimed that broad statistical conclusions found in such reports were of limited value to anti-fraud managers.…

THE UK’s exit from the European Union (EU), scheduled April 1, 2019, will be a real challenge for the European cosmetics industry, John Chave, director-general for EU industry body Cosmetics Europe told Soap Perfumery & Cosmetics in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the key European Cosmetics Week 2017 event in Brussels.…

ACCOUNTANTS must become trusted business advisers to succeed in big corporations, says ACCA-qualified Sumathi Mohnani, whose 20-year career at IBM has seen her become Global Integration CFO for one of its subsidiaries – Sanovi Technologies.

“You need to understand the business itself – the product or the service that you are selling,” she stressed.…

THE HUMAN resources sector has been urged to put pressure on governments and investment fund managers in Asia to strengthen pension provisions as they deal with the consequences of rapidly aging populations.

And HR and economics experts have warned that corporate HR teams have a critical role to play in educating the workforce about the extent, however limited, of their pension provision and working with company bosses to strengthen policies within their organisations to compensate for the lack of robust schemes in existence.…

With the nationwide tax being levied from July 1, the announcement of a wide variety of rates by India’s GST Council last week has caused concern. This is ironic given that a key aim of the reform was to streamline sales taxes – until now a patchwork of national, state and municipal charges.…

THE INDIAN government has announced it is setting up a no-fly list of unruly passengers, based on reports from domestic airlines. The action by the ministry of civil aviation follows reports between last July (2016) and February (2017) of 53 unruly passenger behaviour incidents on flights within India.…

BRIDGING the digital divide in a largely conventional and labour- intensive industry such as garment and textile manufacturing is often a challenge. But Malaysia’s G.PRO Technologies – an arm of Apparel Alliance Sdn Bhd – is re-defining shop flow operations in the apparel business with its innovative software and hardware – helping the industry transition towards digitalisation. …

THE INDONESIAN government needs to establish new livestock production zones as it proactively tries to boost the country’s national meat production and consumption through encouraging the import of livestock, and temporarily of frozen beef, the country’s executive director of the Indonesian Meat Importers Association has said.…

AN EY business fraud survey covering Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA) has shown an alarming 73% of younger corporate employees aged 25-34 think “unethical action is justified to help businesses survive.”

Jim McCurry, the accounting network’s EMEIA head of fraud investigation & dispute services noted: “Our survey found relaxed attitudes towards unethical behaviours and high levels of mistrust among colleagues are common characteristics in today’s workforce, particularly among younger generations.”…

INDIA’S financial sector has been taking increasingly strong measures to fight against banking fraud, but tough anti-fraud measures adopted by Indian banks can upset customers, reducing business and obstruct government plans to popularise banking services.

The Bank of India, a government-owned commercial bank, for instance, now blocks all withdrawals from an account that has not recorded a transaction for three months.…

THE PLANNED introduction of mandatory audit firm rotation (MAFR) by the South African Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors (IRBA) has sparked widespread dissention within the country’s business and accounting communities This is despite that the reform’s goal is to strengthen auditor independence and audit quality and that there are some calls for the move to be brought forward from the current introduction date of April 1, 2023.…

Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) has released a new Malaysian Code on Corporate Governance (MCCG). This revised guidance encourages the development of corporate governance culture, not just within listed companies, but also state-owned enterprises, small-and-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and licensed intermediaries. This code includes 36 practices to support strong board leadership; effective audit, risk management, and internal controls; and solid corporate reporting.…

THE INDONESIAN government must do better in controlling illegal imports of textile and textile products, Anies Soengkar, chairman of the Indonesian Textile Association (API – Asosiasi Pertekstilan Indonesia) branch Pekalongan, Central Java told WTiN.com.

This representative of a key textile production zone in Indonesia said that illicit imports are entering the country for distribution by door-to-door delivery networks.…

VIETNAM is working hard to develop an upstream parts manufacturing base, but this goal is proving hard to achieve and meanwhile, regional liberalization through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is threatening the country’s auto assembly segment.

In many ways, it is crunch time for Vietnam’s auto sector.…

INDIA’s Reliance Industries Ltd has commenced commercial production from a coal bed methane block SP(West)–CBM–2001/1 in Sohagpur, Madhya Pradesh. Gas has been flowing since March 24 and is supplying methane to the 302 km Shahdol Phulpur pipeline that links the field to wider Indian gas networks.…

EU MINISTERS APPROVE DOUBLE TAXATION REDUCTION SYSTEM

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) Council of Ministers has agreed a directive insisting that member states establish an effective system for resolving EU double taxation disputes. The system requires dispute resolution mechanisms to be mandatory and binding, with clear time limits.…

MALAYSIAN Prime Minister Najib Razak used his Labour Day (May 1) speech to send a key message to employers: prioritise locals over foreigners when recruiting. In a country with 200,000 unemployed graduates as of last year, the PM’s call could be justified – although a lot needs to be done in reskilling locals, experts argue.…

India’s largest milk producer Amul has said it will be investing USD400 million in creating new production capacity over the next three years, just-food has been told. “We are putting new dairy plants in Gandhinagar, Himatnagar [both in Gujarat], Kolkata and Mumbai,” Rupinder Singh Sodhi, managing director of Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), which owns the Amul brand, told just-food.…

India’s confectionery and chocolate manufacturer Parle Products Pvt Ltd has created a sub-brand ‘Platina’ for its premium, modern and more internationally-oriented products. The shift has come as Parle is planning to stress its 90-years-old company name for branding, focusing on its core brand’s stress on tradition and heritage.…

The Food Safety and Standard Authority of India (FSSAI) will announce draft standards for fortifying packaged food “within next few weeks” in which bread, pasta and cereal are “likely candidates,” its CEO Pawan Agarwal has told just-food.

The FSSAI’s scientific panel on nutrition and fortification is drafting the standards he said, which would be official, but voluntary.…

INDIA’S perfumery market is expanding with fast growing demand, easier availability of top brands and greater choice of products across the price range. According to market researcher Euromonitor International, the country’s overall fragrance market registered annual sales of USD298 million in 2016 and is projected to grow at an annual rate of 13.7% in next five year as the country’s USD2 trillion economy continues to grow at more 7% annually.…

India’s snacks and confectionery manufacturer Bikanervala Foods has confirmed to just-food that it is holding discussions about partial sale of an equity stake, but a final decision has yet to be made, said an executive. Manish Aggarwal, director of Bikanervala Foods in New Delhi told just-food: “We certainly meet them [potential investors] as they are from the industry, but we have not told anyone that we are ready to sell.”  …

Political uncertainty over US trade deals sparked by the ascension of President Donald Trump to power should be eased to avoid stifling innovation in the country’s technical textiles industry which could see it marginalised on the world stage, insiders have warned.…

EUROPEAN Union (EU) cosmetics and soaps companies are awaiting with interest the results of the World Trade Organisation (WTO)’s appellate body’s decision on Indonesia’s claim that the EU’s anti-dumping duties have been unfairly placed on imported fatty alcohols from the south-east Asian economic giant.…

A STAGGERING 62% of Asia-Pacific consumers (including China and India) buy natural and organic cosmetics and another promising 32% are keen to buy them – making the region a hotspot for manufacturers of such lines. But this impressive growth also has made the region a perfect breeding ground for greenwashing, experts warned.…

SALES of personal fragrance products maybe on the rise among the 1.4 billion people market of mainland China, but thus far, growth is still almost solely attributable to millennials residing in the big cities, market researchers say.

Retail sales of personal perfume products grew by 8.9% in the whole of 2016 from the previous year to just Chinese Yuan Renminbi CNY6.1 billion (USD885 million), with the competitive landscape remaining firmly in the hand of foreign players, according to market researcher Euromonitor International.…

India’s perfumery market is expanding with fast growing demand, easier availability of top brands and greater choice of products across the price range. According to market researcher Euromonitor International, the country’s overall fragrance market registered annual sales of USD298 million in 2016 and is projected to grow at an annual rate of 13.7% in next five year as the country’s USD2 trillion economy continues to grow at more 7% annually.…

INDIA’S Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council (TEXPROCIL), one of the oldest textile export promotion councils in India, is looking forward to an Indian-government promoted major conference and exhibition ‘Textiles India – 2017’, in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, from June 30 to July 2.…

INDIA’S Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council (TEXPROCIL), one of the oldest textile export promotion councils in India, is looking forward to an Indian-government promoted major conference and exhibition ‘Textiles India – 2017’, in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, from June 30 to July 2.…

Facing a decline in its natural gas production, Bangladesh is diversifying supplies by building its first liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal—a floating storage and re-gasification unit (FSRU) on southeastern Moheshkhali Island, near Chittagong. The project is being guided by US-based LNG regasification specialist Excelerate Energy, with the facility designed to handle up to 700mcfd (million cubic feet per day) from next year (2018).…

THE MALAYSIAN government has secured help from India to improve the quality and employability of its workforce, as it seems to ensure 35% of its workers are skilled workers by 2020 – a key government target.  

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed earlier this month (April 1) between the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII) and Malaysia’s Pembangunan Sumber Manusia Berhad (PSMB), an arm of Human Resource Development Fund under Malaysia’s ministry of human resources.…

With the value of Bitcoin skyrocketing over the past year, up from USD525 per Bitcoin last August to USD1,200 in mid-April, with one unit now being able to buy an ounce of gold, finding ways to efficiently regulate decentralised and independent virtual currencies (VCs) has become a top priority among governments and regulators worldwide.…

THE EUROPEAN wipes market is a complex affair. This is a varied segment, in itself, but wipe use varies between countries with contrasting consumer cultures – meaning that in some states, wipes sales are increasing; in others decreasing; and in others, the kinds of wipes being sold is changing.…

THE DIAMOND trade is still one of money launderers’ best friends due the precious stone’s high value to mass ratio, akin to the highest value banknotes that can be obtained. Indeed, it is maybe harder to trace diamonds than numbered banknotes, there is no reliable means by which the point of origin of a particular diamond can be ascertained just by examining it.…

An announcement of a new law that will control marketing promotions of food for infants and toddlers in the Royal Gazette of Thailand is expected soon, then to become effective in 60 days, UNICEF Thailand has confirmed to just-food.

His follows the kingdom’s National Legislative Assembly had voting unanimously on April 5 to enact the Control of Marketing of Infant and Young Child Food Act.…

Hyderabad-based Heritage Foods plans to launch a German yogurt brand in India, the company has confirmed to just-food. “[Joint venture] negotiations are in an advance stage and [the formal] announcement will happen after one or one and a half months,” said a company spokesperson.…

South India’s Heritage Foods today announced its entry into north Indian dairy market by setting up ofive new production units for procuring and processing of 2.8 million litres of fresh milk every day, just-food has been told. The new units will be situated in Ludhiana in Punjab; Kaladera near Jaipur, Rajasthan; Murana near Agra, Uttar Prade two in Haryana state, at Rai and Kundli.…

THE CHIEF executive of a major Pakistan government economic development agency has told wardsauto that Volkswagen has made significant progress in talks to establish new manufacturing production in this key south Asian market’s port city of Karachi. The latest fruit of the business-friendly policies pursued by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, “Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles is in final talks with Premier Systems Private Limited – the authorised importer of Audi vehicles in the country – to set up a manufacturing/assembly plant for its Amarok and T6 (transporter range) models and Volkswagen,” Tariq Ejaz Chaudhary, CEO of Pakistan’s Engineering Development Board told wardsauto.…

Cambodia’s garment industry is in a curious situation, with statistics indicating that export earnings from this key Asian fabric and yarn buyer are on the rise, despite evidence that overseas sales should actually be falling. According to one industry insider, this makes it difficult to project how the Cambodian clothing sector will perform in 2017 and hence how much it will spend on supplies.…

DEMAND for coatings for the Middle East’s oil and gas sector has been sluggish in the wake of lower energy prices. New infrastructure projects and maintenance is ongoing, but with government and national oil companies’ (NOCs) budgets getting tighter, so is the demand for innovative coating solutions.…

A MALAYSIAN government scheme encouraging foreign investors to buy property in Malaysia may have led to thousands of Bangladeshis breaching their country’s strict capital control restrictions.

A total of 3,493 Bangladeshis has participated in the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) long-term residency programme since 2003, according to statistics updated in December (2016) – 10.7% of all investors taking part worldwide.…

AN APPRECIATION of interior design along with environmental concerns appear to be driving innovation when it comes to the colouring of nonwovens.

Often used in functional or ‘behind the scenes’ capacities in industrial applications, colour is not always top of the list when consideration is given to nonwovens finishing processes.…

Meat sellers in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh are on indefinite strike to protest the new Hindu nationalist state government’s forced closure of slaughterhouses and meat shops. Traders allege the government action specifically targets Uttar Pradesh’s minority Muslim community.…

THE EUROPEAN Commission should bring forward legislation to enhance due diligence for supply chains in the garment sector, the European Parliament’s development committee said yesterday (March 21). MEPs backed a report by Spanish MEP Lola Sánchez Caldentey from the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) group which asked the Commission to propose a European Union (EU) law saying a binding reporting system should generate data linking each product to its respective producers.…

PAKISTAN knitwear manufacturers and exporters say the country’s knitwear industry is passing through difficult times, with export sales becoming tougher to secure through growing input costs and a continued failure of the government to implement a much-vaunted and recently-announced bailout package.…

INDIA’S fast growing consumer goods company Patanjali Ayurved is launching a major international expansion initiative with plans to export products to China, Bangladesh and some African countries, just-food has been told.

“We presume [that] there is a great potential for our herbal products [in those countries], so we are intensifying our efforts to make it available at large,” a spokesperson from the Uttarakhand-based company told just-food.…

THE INDIAN food processing industry has called on the central government to be cautious as it considers potential regulations forcing food labels to highlight potentially unhealthy product content.

An official from the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) in New Delhi told just-food that new label rules were under discussion, although these consultations were at an early stage.…

The Indian government has announced it is removing restrictions on exports of organic agriculture products to increase its international market share and boost output within this segment. The changes will come into effect by April 14. “The government is supporting the farmers and exporters to tap huge opportunity that exists within the country and abroad for organic agriculture products,” said a statement from the central government cabinet economic affairs committee on Friday (March 31).…

THE INDIAN government has released a new updated master plan for expanding Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), in New Delhi. It includes building a new fourth runway, a new terminal and expanding existing terminals 1 and 3. “The updated master plan envisages expansion of passenger handling capacity of IGIA from existing 62 million passengers per annum [mppa] to 109.3 million” in three phases between 2017 and 2034, said Jayant Sinha, civil aviation minister.…

Around one-in-four people in Asia-Pacific countries are estimated to have paid bribes to access public services, according to the latest survey of 22,000 people across the region from Transparency International. Published March 7 ‘People and Corruption: Asia Pacific Survey 2017’ reveals approximately 900 million people living in 16 countries in Asia Pacific have paid these bribes, with the poorest being hardest hit – some 38% of this group admitted to paying a bribe, rising to 73% in India.…

ASIA’S technical textiles sectors continue to grow, fuelled by ready buyers in domestic and overseas markets, but governments can and do help too – keen to promote these sustainable high tech industries.

China is a case in point. Its industry and information technology ministry plus the National Development and Reform Commission in January (2017) jointly issued development guidance for technical textiles as part of China’s 13th Five-Year Plan, which runs from 2016-20.…

SOLAR power of course draws on a free renewable energy to create electricity, but a burgeoning sector is enabling the harnessing of heat for cooking, which can promote energy efficiency in all manner of climates – solar cookers.

Indian solar cooker innovator Deepak Gadhia and Julie Greene, executive director, Solar Cookers International (SCI), co-chaired a 6^th SCI World Conference held in Gujarat, India, this January, that demonstrated how these technologies are entering the mainstream.…

THE USE of airless technology in packaging is largely about zero product waste, preserving product integrity and less packaging material – and it obviously gels well with the growing trend towards sustainability. That explains the uptake in this technology led by cosmetics packaging, industry experts argue.…

IT has been a tough year for the fragrance industry in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where competition between international and local brands has intensified, while consumer spending has been weakening. But this has not stopped perfumiers from launching new products nor has it prevented overseas suppliers from expanding their local presence.…

India’s complex Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime is set for a launch on July 1 with complicating features such as multiple tax rates and a separate law to guarantee minimum revenues to the country’s states. The central government is moving ahead with the plans, even as the country’s USD2 trillion economy recovers from the shock of November’s withdrawal of high value banknotes.…

EVERY time apparel industry executive Israfil Alam and his wife buy groceries, one item doesn’t elude them: chocolate for their 13-year-old son Isman Sayer.

“Isman’s favourite is Kit Kat Chunky,” Alam, a Dhaka-based general manager at knitwear maker Magpie Group, told Confectionery Production.…

PAKISTAN business leaders trading in traditional Kashmiri textiles are worried about the shrinking size of the trade in their products, blaming the government for this poor state of affairs. It is hard times for Pakistan manufacturers of Kashmiri shawls, popularised by French Queen Marie Antoinette as a luxury item and more recently popular amongst ethnic clothing consumers.…

The chairman of the Indonesian Textiles Association (API) has expressed cautious optimism about President Donald Trump’s rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact and re-confirmed the need to boost Indonesia’s competitiveness.

Trump pulled the USA out of the agreement on January 23, and while that could be bad news for the other 11 TPP partners, including regional textile sector competitors Malaysia and clothing hub Vietnam, the deal had yet to include Indonesia.…

Enhancing the percentage of oil recovered from existing assets is a no-brainer for countries that want to maximise economic gains from their oil reserves.

In an era of apparently ‘lower for longer’ oil prices, it is high up the agenda for oil companies and governments.…

THE EUROPEAN and Canadian minerals industries have broadly welcomed the approval by the European Parliament of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the European Union (EU) and Canada (CETA), saying it would increase exports in an already flourishing trade.…

THE INDIAN textile industry is banking on informal assurances of increased central government support for the sector, after the it was largely ignored in February 1’s formal announcement of the national budget.

Harminder Sahni, managing director of consultancy firm Wazir Advisors, said that while finance minister Arun Jaitley had not mentioned specifics in his budget speech, “we have been told by the ministry of textiles that all its plans are approved and it will get [extra] money.”…

With the global garment market still growing fast, Bangladesh needs to seize the so-called ‘China-plus’ opportunity while penetrating new markets and diversifying its products, a Dhaka conference has heard.

In a keynote speech Dr Nazneen Ahmed, a senior research fellow at the state-run think-tank Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), argued world apparel sales were USD445 billion in 2015, set to grow USD700 billion by 2021

But uncertainty over Brexit, the new Trump-influenced global trade regime and an India’s textile sector incentive package of Indian rupees INR60 billion (USD900 million) are posing fresh challenges for the Bangladesh industry, speakers stressed.…

One month after staunch free-trade opponent Donald Trump became US President there are many policy decisions still to be confirmed and clarified to get a full idea of the impact his presidency will have on the trade in technical textiles. His accession comes during an unstable time for international trade – it is arguably even less clear how the UK’s planned exit from the EU will work out for the sector.…

KEY MESSAGES

*The nuclear industry has an ageing staff and needs to recruit new professionals as they retire

*Its strong health and retirement benefits packages could help it attract the new staff it needs

*The nuclear industry outside north America has a strong expat component, making it easier for recruit staff from abroad

INTRODUCTION

The nuclear industry sector is facing some significant human resources challenges, but new research carried out by Airswift and Energy Jobline indicates that the nuclear sector can still compete for talent.…

AS Bangladesh aims to double its apparel exports in the next five years, industry executives and experts agree on one thing: value addition is the key and the development of digital printing services is a key strand of this strategy.
As a result, the launch of operations by Indian textile printing manufacturer and distributor DCC (Dhaval Colour Chem) in Dhaka last December was an important step towards creating such an integrated supply chain in Bangladesh.…

Natural gas, including its liquefied form LNG, can be the long-term growth story among fossil fuels but needs to withstand stiff challenges

The naming ceremony in February 2017 for offshore facilities for the Ichthys liquefied natural gas project in Australia was another milestone in the huge wave of investment in LNG production capacity globally in recent years.…

YEAR–round sunshine, a young population, and a large expatriate community have made the United Arab Emirates (UAE) a strategic destination for multinational suncare brands, which continue to dominate the local market.

According to London-based research company Euromonitor International, the UAE’s suncare market was valued at Emirati Dirham AED89.38 million (USD24.3 million) in 2016, up 4% compared to 2015.…

EVERY time apparel industry executive Israfil Alam and his wife buy groceries, one item doesn’t elude them: chocolate for their 13-year-old son Isman Sayer.

“Isman’s favourite is Kit Kat Chunky,” Alam, a Dhaka-based general manager at knitwear maker Magpie Group, told Confectionery Production.…

THE TRADE in confectionery products between the European Union (EU) and Canada is likely to increase now the European Parliament has approved the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).

The vote – on February 15 (2017) – follows years of detailed negotiations and means that large sections of this trade deal can now come into force, maybe as early as April, as long as Canada stages its own vote in time.…

EAGER to give a new twist to the abaya (the robe-like dress worn by some Muslim women), she went on to create dozens of unconventional designs of the traditional garment and opened three branches of her boutique in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).…

WORLD leader in viscose staple fibre, Mumbai-based conglomerate the Aditya Birla Group has boosted its sustainability policies through a social and agro-forestry programme designed to reduce the environmental and community impact of its in-house fibre sourcing.

Focused on its operations in Karnataka, India, the group has launched what it calls a ‘Better Viscose Initiative’, developing new in house cloned eucalyptus fibre sourcing plantations that are about to come online, supplying quality fibre for Birla operations.…

THE PREDOMINANTLY meat-eating communities in the Moslem-majority Kashmir valley in the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir has become a significant market for Indian meat and livestock producers from outside the region.

The Kashmir Valley’s 7 million people – the northern and mainly Moslem part of the state – have long sourced sheep and goat meat from nomads rearing livestock in this fertile region, but these local meat supplies nowhere near meet demand.…

The Indian food processing industry is calling for detailed discussion on reports that the central government is planning to impose sugar and fat taxes on what it regards as ‘junk food’.

Sagar Kurade, president of All India Food Processors’ Association, in New Delhi, is concerned that such taxes could be announced in the government’s next budget, due to be presented on February 1.…

India’s edible oil producer Ruchi Soya Ltd has denied news reports that it has stuck a deal with Patanjali Ayurveda Ltd for marketing all of its future production under the Patanjali brand name. “It is just market speculation and we do not consider it worthy of making any official comment,” a spokesperson for Ruchi Soya, in Mumbai, told just-food.…

India’s Patanjali Ayurved Ltd has rejected a December (2016) ruling against the booming packaged food company in a misbranding case as politically motivated and will appeal, the company’s managing director Acharya Balkrishna told just-food in an exclusive interview.

Mr Balkrishna, who also owns 94% of the company shares, criticised the judgement from the additional district magistrate in Patanjali Ayurved’s home city of Haridwar, Uttarakhand, who fined the company Indian Rupees INR1.1 million Rupees (USD16,100) for selling certain food products, including mustard oil, in 2012 with its own labels, as Patanjali products, even though they had been manufactured by another company.…

A NEWLY announced Indian rupees INR80 billion (USD1.18 billion) Dairy Processing and Infrastructure Development Fund is designed to increase the country’s milk production by 8% every year, just-food has been told.

Commenting on the initiative unveiled in the government’s national budget yesterday (February 1), Mumbai-based Rajender Singh, CEO of VRS Foods Ltd, said: “The government wants to extend the infrastructure to rural and remote areas to increase the processing and procurement capacity.”…

By the end of this year Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) will have gone a significant way to achieving its goal of powering all the country’s state-owned regional airports from renewable energy sources.

The first milestone in this ambitious project was achieved early last year when ACSA announced that George Airport had become Africa’s first – and the world’s second, after Cochin airport in southern India – largely green-powered airport following the completion of phase one of its solar development.…

THE INDIAN government has approved the transfer of 11.35 acres of land to Airports Authority of India (AAI) to enable the expansion of Jay Prakash Narayan International Airport, Patna, Bihar. The project involves building a new terminal building, with associated infrastructures, enabling the airport to handle 3 million passengers per year, up from the 1.5 million that currently use airport facilities designed for 500,000: “This has led to extreme crowding in the terminal building,” said an Indian cabinet note.…

A JUDGE yesterday (January 17) approved Britain’s largest ever commercial crime enforcement action – a GBP497.25 million (USD616 million) plus interest and GBP13 million costs (USD16.1 million) deferred prosecution agreement with the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO). Sir Brian Leveson, President of the Queen’s Bench division, agreed the penalty for Rolls-Royce, covering covers 12 counts of conspiracy to corrupt, false accounting and failure to prevent bribery.…

THE EUROPEAN dairy industry may be able to increase its sales in India’s dairy market, as central Indian government’s plans to fortify milk and other dairy products with vitamins could boost demand for high quality products from abroad.

“The ongoing debate over the issue has increased awareness about fortified food,” Naresh Kumar Bhanot, secretary of Indian Dairy Association (IDA) told Dairy Industries International: “Foreign dairy companies with appropriate products could exploit the market.”…

NORTH Africa has never been a particular easy place to do business, but female and male consumers are prepared to spend on personal care products, and profits are there for the taking for companies that take time to understand these vibrant and often contrasting markets.…

CHINA’S central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBC), has issued a new anti-money laundering and terror finance reporting requirements for all financial institutions inside the country. The rules come into force July 1. They cover banks, brokers, foreign exchange, online and mobile payment systems and insurance companies, who will have to file reports to the central bank, via their headquarters or via representative institutions, if a client requires daily cash transactions exceeding Chinese Yuan Renminbi CNY50,000 (USD7,261) or a larger amount of USD10,000’s worth in foreign currency.…

Hacking and data breaches keep Asian IT departments awake at night, but many of the most serious cyber security incidents can be prevented with greater vigilance from HR professionals. Of course, there are a wide variety of risks being posed to companies from online environments, from denial-of-service attacks, to Trojan programmes that monitor computer use, and theft of identities and intellectual property.…

2016 – Winners and losers

RETAILERS & BRANDS

WINNERS

US-based sportswear brand Under Armour delivered its 26th consecutive quarter of 20%-plus revenue growth in the third quarter of 2016, with sales increases across all divisions. Net sales were up 22% in the third quarter to USD1.47bn.…

AS BANGLADESH grapples with the problem of childhood stunting, a United Nations expert has called for a boost in animal protein consumption within this south Asian country to tackle the crisis. Stunting is a condition where children grow at slower rates than the average person, being shorter than a typical person of their age.…