Passion for Cotton!
35th International Cotton Conference Bremenfrom 25 to 27 March 2020
Bremen, 10 February 2020. The International Cotton Conference Bremen starts on 25 March in the Hanseatic city’s historic Town Hall. But before subject-specific questions are discussed in depth in the individual sessions, the concise and inspiring keynotes by leading business experts from science and industry will draw attention to the current trends and challenges in the industry at the start of the conference. A large part of the presentations is shaped by the current discussion on environmental and sustainability issues and the resulting consequences for the global economy.
Climate Change and Sustainability
“Climatechange – a storm in a teacup?” asks KaiHughes, Executive Director of the International Cotton Advisory Committee,Washington D.C., USA, in a provocative speech. The aim of his presentation isto work out the challenges of climate change especially for agriculture andcotton production. This should form the basis for later discussion on concreteapproaches and solutions within the cotton community.
With hislecture “The HUGO BOSS sustainability programme … and what our customer hasto do with it” Andreas Streubig,Director of Global Sustainability at Hugo Boss AG, Metzingen, Germany, rolls upthe textile value chain from a different angle, starting at the consumer level.As a representative of a premium brand for women’s and men’s clothing, Streubigdiscusses sustainability as a strategic element of the corporate strategy andprovides information on how elements of the strategy are being implemented atHugo Boss.
Rüdiger Senft, Head of Sustainability at Commerzbank, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, looks at the changing role of banks in financing the cotton market. In addition to a general introduction to the topic of sustainability and banking regulation, Senft’s presentation deals with the financing of the cotton trade from a social and ecological point of view.
The openingsession on 25 March is hosted by Bill Ballenden, founder and owner ofDragontree, Swindon, UK, an online auction platform for the cotton trade. As aformer cotton manager for Louis Dreyfus in Europe and Asia, Bill Ballenden hasmany years of experience in the industry.
Cross-Cutting Issues: Digitalisation, Gender, ValueChains
Thesubsequent session in the conference programme with the headline “A Wider View”is devoted to currently defining trends and important cross-cutting issues inthe industry. This goes far beyond classic cotton themes.
A lectureby Mark Messura, Senior VicePresident, Global Supply Chain Marketing for Cotton Incorporated, Cary, NorthCarolina, deals with the role of cotton in an increasingly digitally controlledsupply chain. Significant keywords here are faster delivery times, verticalintegration, transparency and traceability.
The presentation by Roger Gilmartin, Managing Director of Tri-Blend Consulting, Charlotte, USA, entitled “The secret recipe for timely, cost-optimised and high-quality cotton clothing” promises exciting and enlightening insights. Tri-Blend Consulting conducts studies on the performance of different cotton varieties during the entire consumption process to the finished yarn and evaluates them from an economic point of view.
AmyJackson, from the BetterCotton Initiative, London, UK, presents ICA Liverpool’s “Women in Cotton”initiative. With this commitment, the initiative aims to increase the influenceof women in the cotton industry and give them a stronger voice, for example by buildingnetworks in cooperation.
NavdeepSingh Sodhi,International Strategic Management Consultant at the Gherzi Textile Organisation,Switzerland, gives an insight into the current development of the value chainfor cotton, textiles and clothing in Africa. Looking ahead to the coming decades,also in view of population growth, Africa is seen as having a high potential forbuilding economic structures to improve income and prosperity.
Thomas Schneider, Professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin and active in the field of production planning and control, textile materials and materials testing will host the session. A leading light in his field, Thomas Schneider has more than 30 years of experience in scientific and application-oriented research in the textile and fibre sector, including at the Fibre Institute Bremen e.V.
About the International Cotton Conference
From 25thto 27th March, the International Cotton Conference Bremen in thehistoric town hall offers ten highly topical conference sessions with relevantsubjects that currently challenge the internationally networked cotton textileindustry. The International Cotton Conference is organised by the FibreInstitute Bremen (FIBRE) and the Bremen Cotton Exchange. During the weekbeginning on March 23th and later additionally to the Conference,group meetings of internationally operating textile associations and cottonorganisations will take place. In addition, there will be the public eventSustain, organised in cooperation with the daily newspaper Weser-Kurier. AtSustain, the headline “City and Change – The Future of Textile Retailing” isall about the vitality of the clothing trade in the city centres and thecompetition from online sales.
We willcontinuously inform about further contents of the Cotton Conference and of thesupporting programme. Current news about the conference and programme detailsis also available on the internet site of the conference. We are lookingforward to media coverage. We gladly take interview requests and refer you to the right person to talk to. We are alreadyinviting journalists to the conference. Accreditations can be made any time viathe conference homepage https://cotton-conference-bremen.de/press .
For further information and interview requests,please contact:
BremenCotton Exchange
ElkeHortmeyer, Director of Communications and International Relations
Tel.:+49-421-3397016
E-mail: hortmeyer@baumwollboerse.de
www.cotton-conference-bremen.de