After over a decade of prioritizing price, the textile industry now has a basket of criteria that it uses to identify the optimal places to source yarn, fabric and apparel.
While price is still important, reliability, flexibility, and resilience are also critical considerations. The past two years have taught us that we need to rethink our supply chains in order to be able to cope with all kinds of unexpected circumstances.
This shift in mindset has prompted brands to take a second look at countries that they might have overlooked a few years ago.
“ Thailand has what we call ‘fiber to garment’. We have a textile supply chain that includes spinning through to finished garments – and that is reliable. ”
One of those countries is Thailand, a nation with a strong textile legacy. And a place that has the all-important competitive advantage of a domestic supply chain.
The numbers highlight Thailand’s growth as a source for yarn, fabric and apparel. In the period from January to April 2022, total textile exports rose 12 percent year-on-year, according to TTMA data.
Yarn exports surged 50-70 percent year- on-year, while fabric exports increased 30 percent from a year ago.
“Thailand has what we call ‘fiber to garment’. We have a complete textile supply chain that includes spinning through to finished garments. We have been in this business for a long time so the Thai manufacturers understand the requirements of international brands,” said Phongsak Assakul, president of the Thai Textile Manufacturers Association (TTMA).
Competing with Quality & Reliability
Another key to Thailand’s growing popularity is its reputation of being a reliable supplier.
“We are quite consistent with our quality, which is one of the reasons brands come to Thailand. You might have to pay a slightly higher price,however you get what you pay for,” said Mr. Assakul.
Unlike many other textile sourcing nations, Thailand has good infrastructure, including Laem Chabang Port (LCB) deep water port, the nation’s largest port.
Connectivity within the region is also being enhanced by new rail services. “We now have this fast train that goes from Laos into southern China, which facilitates exports,” he said, referring to the China-Laos Railway that opened in 2021 and is being extended through to Thailand.
As more garment manufacturing moves into Laos, the rail link makes it faster and easier to ship materials from Thailand to the factories there.
Raw materials also play a key role in reliability and quality.
“You need to start with the good raw materials if you actually want to get a good product. We use a lot of U.S. cotton and now we are buying better grades of cotton.
We are upgrading our products and can produce up to 80 and 100 counts.”
A Stakeholder in Sustainable Manufacturing
Thailand is keen to promote the use of sustainable fibers. For example, the government is encouraging mills to develop products with hemp, as well as promoting the upcycling of agricultural waste – such as pineapple and banana leaves, lotus and others -into textile fibers.
“These fibers are being blended with cotton. Mostly they are short staple, so we are looking at how we can make them into long staple so that we can blend them with long staple cotton and create better quality products,” said Mr. Assakul.
“Our goal is to become more sustainable and we believe that natural fibers will play a key role in this.”
“Now U.S. cotton has launched their U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol® (the Trust Protocol) program which is providing supply chain transparency. I think the market really wants this kind of information,” he said.
Consumers want high quality products that have a reduced environmental impact. Brands want a reliable and flexible source for production. Thai manufacturers can meet all of those requirements.
Email. ttma@thaitextile.org | Tel. +66 0 2392 0755 | www.thaitextile.org/TTMA
Certified Sustainable
The Trust Protocol is aligned with existing sustainability programs including the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. It brings quantifiable and verifiable goals and measurement to sustainable cotton production, and drives continuous improvement in six key sustainability metrics – land use, soil carbon, water management, soil loss, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy efficiency. The Trust Protocol is designed from the ground up to address the unique regulatory and larger farm growing environment in the United States.
How the Trust Protocol Works
The Protocol Consumption Management Solution (PCMS) starts at the gin when the participating producer’s cotton is ginned and each unique Permanent Bale Identification number (PBI) is attached. At this point we know the exact gin weight and can create an exact amount of Protocol Cotton Consumption Units, where one Protocol Cotton Consumption Unit is created for each kilogram of Protocol Verified Cotton. This important step provides absolute authentication of U.S. cotton origin, verifying against the USDA database.
Supply Chain Transparency
The PCMS harnesses blockchain technology through a powerful combination of the Trust Protocol platform and TextileGenesis™ system to deliver full supply chain transparency by recording and verifying the movement of U.S. cotton along the entire supply chain. This creates article-specific transparency for finished products that was not previously accessible to brands and retailers.
Trusted Third Party Certification
The Trust Protocol incorporates a comprehensive program of verification against Trust Protocol benchmarks, in the form of both second-party and independent third-party audits of grower performance through Control Union Certifications—the latter through allocated on-site visits.
Control Union Certifications has certified over 150 industry standards programs worldwide, including working as a key partner in the early development and piloting phases of Impact Claim Verification Protocol.
Learn More https://trustuscotton.org
The COTTON USA Advantage
- Family growers who are committed to working their fields sustainably and leaving them better for future generations.
- A long history of innovative harvesting and ginning technologies resulting in higher-quality cotton.
- One of the highest rates of adoption in the world for Precision Agriculture, which minimizes water and pesticide usage.
- U.S. farmers operate under voluminous, stringent, and enforceable regulations.
- A commitment to transparent partnership that is unmatched anywhere.
- One of the most comprehensive systems for monitoring and measuring all the key metrics involved in sustainability.
U.S. Cotton Facts
- 2/3 of U.S. cotton land uses only rain water
- U.S. cotton water use efficiency has improved by 79% over the past 35 years
- Cotton is carbon footprint neutral, meaning the plants remove more greenhouse gasses than production produces.
Sustainability Goals
The U.S. cotton industry is building upon the strong environmental gains already achieved over the past 35 years. The aim is to help members meet their current needs while making the world a better place for future generations.
Specific goals include:
- Reducing by 13 percent the amount of land needed to produce a pound of cotton fiber
- Reducing soil loss by 50 percent, in balance with new soil formation
- Increasing water use efficiency (more fiber per gallon) by 18 percent
- Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 39 percent
- Increasing soil carbon in fields by 30 percent
- Reducing energy to produce seed cotton and ginned lint by 15 percent
Learn More www.cotton.org
