Problems persist but business booms - BIR Textiles Division
26 Jul '07
3 min read
In his final speech as President of the BIR Textiles Division, Frithjof W. Schepke of Schepke Konzepte in Germany was in a position to deliver perhaps his most positive assessment of market conditions since arriving in office. “Business is booming,” he declared. “Even goods that were not moving before are now moving.”
However, he also acknowledged that “where there is light, there is also shadow”. The textiles recycling industry still faced “structural problems”, including the high cost of raw material and the high proportion of unsaleable material in collections, as well as increasing competition from charity and “quasi charity” organisations.
General Delegate Alexander Glaser of Fachverband Textile Recycling eV, also from Germany, pointed to the “flooding” of the industry's traditional overseas markets for example, Africa with cheap new textiles and shoes from China. Sauro Ballerini of Italy agreed that market conditions had improved but that certain problems such as the high cost of transportation continued to impact on his domestic industry.
Beginning a round of country by country reports, Terry Ralph of the UK Textile Recycling Association (TRA) and Recyclatex confirmed that a meeting had taken place on May 9 this year with Dr Caroline Jackson, an MEP and Rapporteur who had been instrumental in adding secondhand clothing to the list of recyclables to be considered within the European Parliament's review of the “endofwaste” issue. Dr Jackson had promised to promote the case for harmonisation of textile definitions within the EU, he noted.
20240830145952.gif)
.jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "UBM China (Shanghai)")
-Ltd..jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "Thermore (Far East) Ltd.")
