Author name: Haydn Davis

Winston Salem
? With its hosiery sales falling 18% for the first half of 2009, Hanesbrands is
to end production at its Winston-Salem plant in North Carolina by the
end of 2010, with the loss of 240 jobs.

The company attributed the closure of the
50-year-old Weeks plant to the long-term decline in consumer demand for sheer
hosiery products with sales in 2008 also down by 14%.

Manufacturing will start slowing down in
the second quarter of 2010 and cease by the end of the year.

The company?s sheer hosiery distribution
operations at the Weeks plant, known as the East Coast distribution centre,
will relocate to Hanesbrands? existing distribution centre in nearby Rural Hall
by the second quarter of 2010. About 80 distribution employees at Weeks will be
reassigned to work at the Almondridge centre.

The company, whose brands include Bali, Champion, Playtex and Wonderbra, said the shutdown
of the plant would not impact its research, product development, quality
control and engineering functions, which employ about 200, at the Weeks
location. It will sell the 850,000-square-foot facility and lease it back once
the hosiery production stops.

?As a result of lower consumer demand, our
sheer-hosiery production volume has dropped to a point that it is no longer
feasible to run the plant,” said Bruce Duncan, the vice president of
knit-to-shape manufacturing for the company.

Hanes Hosiery Mills Co. opened Weeks in
1960 ? then the largest manufacturing plant ever built in North Carolina ? spending the modern
equivalent of about US$219 million. At the time, the plant had enough machines
to double Hanes’ previous annual production capacity to 100 million pairs of
stockings.

At the end of 2008, Hanesbrands announced
plans to close its last large knitted fabric plant in the US. This was
followed in April with the closure of the Barnwell, South
Carolina, sock-knitting plant which saw production transferred to El Salvador.

Verona ? After several year?s of dwindling
markets, global fibre consumption looks set to reach its 2007 peak by 2012 with
spandex, used extensively in legwear and hosiery, set to rocket by 2015.

Speaking at the Lycra Fibre Moves
conference held in Verona, Italy, in October as part of
celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of Lycra, industry specialist David
Hart of Opus Business Consultants said that fibre demand fell by 4.1% to 70.43
million tonnes in 2008 ? its first dip since 1982. He predicted a further fall of 2.7% for
this year, followed by growth of 1.4% in 2010, 2.1% in 2011 and 4.7% in 2012,
bringing the figure back up to 74.3 million tonnes.

Of specific interest to the conference were
the markets for nylon textile filament and spandex, both being extensively
employed in hosiery and legwear.

Florence – Celebrating its official launch at the recent FIMAST exhibition in Brescia was the new, patent pending Easy Toe, an automatic sock seaming attachment that can be easily retro-fitted to single cylinder socks knitting machines from all of the industry?s leading manufacturers.

The team behind the device, NTA Firenze were all present at the Brescia event, demonstrating the device to a steady stream of visitors inter ested to see how this straightforward, but highly effective device can be retrofitted to their current stock of sock knitting machines.?We wanted to create something for socks makers that would fundamentally help their business in these time of recession but at the same time, it had to be something that was reliable, straightforward to fit and easy to use,? explained sales manager Mr. Venni. ?Essentially, what we have here is an alternative method for the socks manufacturing market to find a way to produce closed toes, something that we believe is a reliable innovative solution.? Watching the Easy Toe in action, you realise that, as its name suggests, the key aspect of this technology is its simplicity and effectiveness.