The market currently has a lot of environmentally friendly fabrics, but the number of suppliers in Vietnam is still small. Photo: L.A.

Talking to Zing about this issue, Mr. Tuan Nguyen, Director of Market Development at Leanwares, said that the reason is that only small and medium enterprises really focus on the issue of "greening".

As a direct consultant to build factories for many businesses not only in the textile industry but also in furniture, biotechnology..., he realizes that Vietnamese businesses have a turnover of about 5-10%. million USD/year are often afraid to change.

"'Greening' not only poses a cost and time problem to change the entire way of operating an enterprise, but in return for that cost and time, businesses have not yet seen the magnitude of the demand. market demand," said Mr. Tuan Nguyen.

In fact, Mr. Dave Quach, the founder of Bao Lan Textile, also admitted that it was very difficult to sell products during the first years of producing environmentally friendly fabrics.

"Developing a product model costs a lot of money, weaving a single fabric costs at least more than 5 million dong, which is unlikely to be accepted by consumers, so textile enterprises are often afraid to experiment, especially those Fabrics that are considered environmentally friendly often have a high price tag.

That's why we only really see an opportunity when we successfully research bamboo fibers at the same price as cotton," said Mr. Dave Quach.

He said bamboo fiber is currently the most environmentally friendly fiber with the most reasonable price. Specifically, while businesses have to spend more than 150,000 VND to buy 1 kg of recycled fiber or more than 200,000 VND for organic fibers, imported bamboo fiber costs only 140,000 VND/kg. Even with Bao Lan's bamboo fiber, the selling price is about 120,000 VND/kg, almost equal to cotton yarn.

"However, we still have to source bamboo from China because the output and quality of bamboo in Vietnam cannot meet. Therefore, we are researching another type of fabric extracted from Vietnam's banana fiber to can be more proactive in supply, and maybe have better prices," said Mr. Dave.

Need to change to catch up with the trend

At the recent review of the first 6 months of the textile industry, Mr. Vu Duc Giang, Chairman of the Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association (Vitas) emphasized the requirement of "greening" textiles from new generation FTAs ​​as one of the challenges that Vietnamese textile and garment enterprises are facing. However, this is also a solution for the industry in the near future.

Because, the textile and garment export turnover in the first half of the year, although increased by 17.7% over the same period, still only reached about 22.3 billion USD, leaving pressure to complete more than 20 billion USD in turnover in the second half of the year. in the context that the main import markets are China, Japan, Taiwan... still applying strict anti-epidemic measures.

Besides, global aggregate demand is showing many signs of decline, while input and production costs of the textile industry have increased by 20-25% year-to-date.

Sharing this view, Mr. Tuan Nguyen said that most of the foreign enterprises he is working with or has information about are looking for "green" materials to put into the supply chain. This has been their request for many years and is further motivated by recent FTAs. He called it "bait" for Vietnamese businesses to pursue the trend of "greening".

Therefore, experts believe that textile and garment enterprises need to actively invest in machinery and technology, enhance human resource training and quickly transform green to adapt to the requirements of brands and catch up with trends. market. Only then can businesses improve their position in the global green supply chain.

Lan Anh