PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday,8 June 2009

BIR WorldRecycling Convention

25-27 May2009, Dubai

PressReleases on Plenary Meetings

TextilesDivision: Live and let live

Compared to previousdownturns, thelatest global economic crisis has had a less harsh impact on manyparts of the textiles recycling industry, according to the Europeanmarket report delivered in Dubai by BIR Textiles Division PresidentOlaf Rintsch of Textil Recycling K&A Wenkhaus GmbH in Germany.“However,” he added, “collectors must ensure that they do notput too much pressure on sorters. There is a need to live and letlive.”

While the used clothingmarket inEurope has been faring relatively well, wiping cloths and therecycling grades have been hit harder by the crisis, with bedfeathers becoming “a shadow of their former selves”, according toMr Rintsch, who has agreed to continue as divisional President.

And in his review of thewider markets,BIR Textiles Division Honorary President Klaus Löwer ofGermany-based Hans Löwer Recycling GmbH drew attention to a 90% dropin wiping cloth prices in the USA. “The global crisis has notspared textiles recyclers but this is not a reason to bepessimistic,” he went on to say. “We must plan for the recoveryperiod.”

Mr Löwer also highlightedtwo concernsrelating specifically to the European market: cross-border tradingdifficulties as a result of “waste” legislation; and thepotential for France’s eco-levy on new clothes and shoes to“distort competition”. A subsidy of up to Euro 119 per tonne “isan amount that will cause us a considerable headache”, heemphasised.

Textiles Division VicePresident MehdiZerroug of Framimex in France confirmed that some of the details ofthe eco-levy system are still to be finalised. Operational aspectsstill to be set include collection of funds from clothing/footwearproducers and the distribution of those funds to sorters. Underconsideration at present is the information to be provided bysorters, he pointed out.

According to Terry Ralph ofTRA in theUK, the economic downturn has led consumers with a reduced disposableincome to increase their purchases of second-hand clothing fromcharity shops, “thus resulting in a product for the sorter oftextiles that is lower in quality and smaller in quantity”. He wenton to report that some of the traditional buyers of used clothing inAfrica are struggling to secure sales and also foreign currencyexchange.

Turning to legislativematters, theTextiles Division’s General Delegate Alexander Gläser ofFachverband Textil-Recycling e.V. in Germany questioned whether usedclothing should ever have been considered to be “waste”. Thedecisive factor should be the “subjective will” of the personconsigning an item to a collection bank; this individual “does notwant to throw away the garment - he cares about what happens to it”,he contended.

Also at the BIR TextilesDivisionmeeting in Dubai, a market update from Pakistan was presented byguest speaker Muhammed Hanif of Muzammil Enterprises. He noted thatthe value of Pakistan’s imports of used clothing had soared fromUS$ 13.619m in 2005/06 to US$ 53.248m in 2007/08. Expectations are ofa further increase for the current financial year, he added.

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