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At the end of 2022, the Chinese garment industry found itself in a conflicting situation: on one hand, the abrupt abandonment of strict Covid-control measures in December fuelled hopes that Chinese consumer demand will grow steadily. But on the other hand, many factories preponed and extended the Chinese New Year holiday to shield their owners’ financial standing from the risk that manufacturing capacity would remain underutilised.…

From tackling the garment industry’s waste challenges, to proving a product’s provenance and providing infinite creative opportunities for designers, ‘digital twins’ – a digital reproduction of real-life clothing or accessories – are already providing significant benefits.

Lui Iarocheski, VP of marketing and new ventures at PlatformE – a Porto, Portugal-based fashion tech company offering mass customisation at scale for fashion brands told Just Style: “The beauty of a digital twin is that it carries rich data.…

Alcohol-free beverages have come a long way since the 1970s when they were targeted at vehicle drivers worried about losing their licences. But with a decrease in per-capita consumption of alcohol among many higher-income markets, many consumers who normally drink alcohol are becoming “sober curious” – looking for non-alcoholic alternatives, according to Andrew Greenhill, an assistant professor for microbiology and fermentation technology at Federation University, Victoria, Australia.…

Political branding can encourage or deter clothing sales, say marketing experts, with the risks and rewards growing where political polarisation intensifies. The key US market is certainly a case in point. Research published in the January-February 2023 issue of the academic journal Marketing Science, by the US-based Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, concluded that, following Donald Trump’s presidential electoral victory in 2016, political polarisation was increasingly extended to consumers’ preferences.…

Chinese dairy giant Mengniu has told Just Food it wants to shorten supply chains for China’s growing ice cream market in a deal with the local government in Meishan, Sichuan province, to build a smart facility to make premium ice cream.…

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.…

As competition in the global beverage market increases, manufacturers are looking to labelling as a key to grow brands through ‘premiumisation’, emphasising its superior quality, exclusivity and sustainability to consumers.

“Customers are looking for premiumisation of their beverage labelling in terms of embellishment, foiling, tactile finishes, but coupled with a sustainable twist,” said Ben Robinson, sales director at Bradford, UK-based The Label Makers, a company that produces labels for premium brands such as Trinidad & Tobago-manufactured Kraken Rum.…

The UK government has been accused of being “asleep at the wheel in the fight against fraud” according to the opposition Liberal Democrats party, which has secured data showing elderly (over-65s) victims are losing GBP1.2 million (USD1.45 million) daily. The party has dubbed this a “tidal wave of scams”.…

A British parliamentary committee has found that victims of authorised push payment (APP) fraud – where people are tricked into paying fake creditors – face inconsistencies in reimbursement, even when their banks are signed up to the voluntary contingent reimbursement model (CRM) code.…

Transparency International warned that “conflict creates opportunities for corruption and subverts governments’ efforts to stop it” in unveiling the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) on January 31, scoring 180 countries worldwide on perceived levels of public sector corruption from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).…