Sri Lanka enters new field of knowledge-based textile garments
Sri Lanka’s apparel industrialists are now exploring new avenues in entering the e-textile and smart clothing global market while promoting quality and fashionable smart garments overseas, the Export Development Board’s (EDB) recent research report revealed.
The country has gained the status of the highest per capita apparel exports in the Asian region with an ambition of reaching the US$8.5 billion mark by the year 2020 by utilising local resources with global technologies, the report predicted.
The apparel export revenue of the island nation has surpassed $5 billion last year making the local fashion and garment industry as the top foreign revenue earner over traditional exports like tea or coconut.
Several leading readymade garment manufacturers are using environment-friendly fabric treatment and colour processing ingredients in the production cycle, a senior EDB official said.
This initiative has enabled them to transform Sri Lanka as an innovative manufacturer of novel smart clothing and fashion solutions in the international market, he added.
At present many Sri Lankan fashion designers of swim wear, intimate wear, haute couture and casual wear have established their brand names in the world fashion scene with elegant, authentic designs made from environmentally and economically sustainable material, he disclosed.
Several apparel companies in the island have been making innovations in the field of smart clothing with embedded digital computing devices and delicate sensors adopting digital technologies.
Smart clothes are garments such as shirts, pants, socks, and shoes with an embedded computing device that monitors health statistics such as heart rate, respiration, skin temperature, and oxygen saturation, the EDB official explained.
Some of Sri Lanka’s leading apparel manufacturers possessed highly sophisticated manufacturing infrastructure, which ensures the security and safety of workers as well as machineries at workplace.
Hirdaramani Group supplies apparel to well-known designer and high street labels based in the UK, US, and across Europe.
The group’s production facilities – located across Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Ethiopia – produce approximately 15 million articles of clothing each month.
This coupled with its mature and integrated manufacturing procedures, makes Hirdaramani a market leader for global apparel manufacturing, the EDB research report revealed.
The group has introduced the concept of Industry 4.0 and ‘smart factories’, where digital and physical systems monitor the physical processes on the factory floor to bring greater visibility, transparency, and speed to production quality.
The company was also eager to leverage the power of real-time analytics and data-driven decision-making to ensure production was no longer dependant on outdated information, the report disclosed.
The group turned to its digital arm, H One to digitise the quality assurance process on their factory floor and provide decision-makers with a 360 degree view of production quality.