GLOBAL - Major corporations - including fashion giants H&M, Zara owner Inditex, Uniqlo owner Fast Retailing, Nike and Adidas - are significantly off track the Paris Agreement goal of limiting climate change to 1.5°C, according to a new report. A total of 51 major ..read more

WAKEFIELD – Our host Philip Berman sits down with Sean Cady, vice president of global sustainability, responsibility and trade for VF Corporation and also elected board director for Cascale, and Andrew Martin, executive vice president of Cascale for our latest podcast ..read more

LONDON - Socially responsible fashion brand Urbanic has completed a $150 million Series C funding round to improve its technology and scale-up its supply chain sustainability. The investment will be used to ramp up the company’s implementation of AI technology which it uses to generate fashion designs and online content, while also using it to minimise inventory waste and deadstock in its manufacturing operations ..read more

WAKEFIELD - The new edition of our Ecotextile News magazine - due out next week - considers some of the challenges of scaling innovations in the textiles industry following the demise of Swedish recycling pioneer Renewcell. Our editor John Mowbray argues that the collapse of Renewcell - which was declared bankrupt at the end of last month - was the result of a combination of failure by brands, investors and the company’s own business plan. Katherine Albertson, a former project manager with a US bio-based materials pioneer, asks whether fashion brands are really the best customers for textile i ..read more

DHAKA - The American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA) has called on the Bangladesh government and the country’s major textile industry trade body to end the ongoing detention and the continued threat of detention, of thousands of workers related to the protests over the minimum wage at the end of 2023. Outlining the strong relationship between the US and Bangladesh, and the latter's position as the third largest supplier of garments to the US, Stephen Lamar, president and CEO of the AAFA, expressed the organisation’s concern over the threats facing minimum wage protesters ..read more

PARIS - Blockchain technology specialist TextileGenesis has launched an upgraded version of its sold-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, which offers the fashion sector a secure and digitised traceability system for all materials and garments.   Part of the Lectra Group, TextileGenesis’s established ‘fibre to retail’ system is designed to provide the traceability of sustainable and certified materials using digital tokens that record every transaction from upstream to downstream of the supply chain in real time ..read more

STOCKHOLM - H&M Foundation has linked up with the Global Fashion Agenda (GFA) initiative to accelerate and scale the recycling of post-industrial textile waste in fashion sourcing countries. The three-year partnership aims to help expand 'National Circular Fashion Partnership' programmes which are active in Bangladesh, in development in Cambodia and Vietnam, and set to expand to Turkey and Indonesia ..read more

MUNICH - Stretch yarn manufacturer Asahi Kasei and cellulosic fibre specialist Lenzing have created a new partnership to develop a portfolio of sustainable and circular-driven textiles. The fabrics under development will be blends of Asahi’s Roica fibre and Lenzing’s Tencel and Modal fibres ..read more

ISTANBUL – The Istanbul Apparel Exporters’ Association (IHKIB) has signed a collaboration agreement with US-based non-profit, Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production (WRAP) as part of a plan to boost Turkish apparel exports to the US market. The agreement focuses on a pilot project developed by IHKIB and WRAP, which aims to identify leading Turkish apparel companies exporting to the US and encouraging these facilities to attain WRAP certification ..read more

BRUSSELS - European proposals to make companies responsible for human rights and environmental issues in their global supply chains have finally been approved - albeit with significant concessions. The European Union's landmark Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) had looked in danger of falling at the last hurdle before today's backing by the European Council ..read more