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After Bangladesh, Seeking New Sources - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...adesh-seeking-new-sources.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 16 May 13 - No Cached

Dozens of impoverished countries make T-shirts and other very basic clothing. But only a few countries — really just China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and to some extent Cambodia and Pakistan — have developed highly complex systems for producing and shipping tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of identical, high-quality shirts, blouses or trousers to a global retailer within several weeks of receiving an order.
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The clothing needs to be labeled correctly so that it travels smoothly through a large retailer’s distribution centers
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The process requires formidable numbers of skilled workers who can oversee quality control as well as labeling and shipping of garments.
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Big retailers and fashion companies have repeatedly tried and failed to develop alternatives, experimenting in India, Africa and Latin America, only to run into infrastructure bottlenecks and shortages of skilled managers or workers.
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India was not organized for large-scale, timely production,
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Africa did not have enough workers with the right skills for high-volume labeling and shipping,
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and Latin America did not have enough workers interested in operating sewing machines.
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In Guatemala, the quality was excellent, he said, but, “They can’t handle big orders and they’re slow on delivery.”
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What may save Bangladesh from a sharp, immediate drop in export orders is simply that most Southeast Asian factories are already fully booked with orders from multinationals fleeing China’s ever-rising costs.
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“For this year, it’s impossible — we’re already full,”
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Indonesia’s national training center for seamstresses — women make up 98 percent of the students — is here in Semarang, producing 12,000 graduates a year. But even that isn’t enough. Four factories with a combined employment of 30,000 are to open in the next year in Semarang, and many more factories are being built nearby.
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“It’s going to take time, but it’s going to eventually filter out all over the place,” he said. “It’ll take two or three years.”
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Newly opened factories have started competing for scarce seamstresses by offering free meals and free health insurance
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Dozens of impoverished countries make T-shirts and other very basic clothing. But only a few countries — really just China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and to some extent Cambodia and Pakistan — have developed highly complex systems for producing and shipping tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of identical, high-quality shirts, blouses or trousers to a global retailer within several weeks of receiving an order.
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He said that he and a couple of other suppliers of elite retail chains always worried about Bangladesh’s reliance on high-rise factories,
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U.S. Ports Seek to Lure Big Ships After Panama Canal Expands - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...fter-panama-canal-expands.html

panamax

shared by Gene Ellis on 10 Apr 13 - No Cached

The big ships — known as “Post-Panamax” and even “Super-Post-Panamax” — are already in heavy use worldwide, making up 16 percent of the container fleet but accounting for 45 percent of its capacity, according to a July report by the Army Corps of Engineers.
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The Port of Virginia, in Norfolk, is ready to receive the big ships today. And New York is also prepared, thanks to a massive dredging project that began 13 years ago.
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But nearly every port in the game still faces major challenges and expenses —
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Baltimore, which already has a 50-foot channel, has a bottleneck on the land side: the Howard Street tunnel, through which trains have to pass to reach the port, and which is too small to accommodate the double-stacked container cars that are increasingly the standard for rail shipping. The rail line CSX has announced a workaround that could cost hundreds of millions, involving a new yard beyond the tunnel filled with containers brought by truck; the port will load the trains with a single container to get through the tunnel, and the trains can be completed at the yard.
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The big ships will also come via places beyond Panama: many are expected to come from Southeast Asia through the Suez Canal, and from South America’s eastern ports.
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