The Example of Silicone Oil - Application in Textile Industry in Bangladesh

Cited from: https://pixabay.com/zh/photos/rolls-of-fabric-factory-material-1767504/

Cover Photo cited from: https://pixabay.com/zh/photos/fabrics-hanging-workers-cloth-5973750/

It is since we have introduced the details of silicone oil for textile in the last two blogs, this blog is going to introduce the actual example of silicone oil for fabric in the real textile industry.

One of the famous examples is the textile industry in Bangladesh; it is since Bangladesh has a huge textile with a large number of industrial workers, the corresponding raw materials and chemicals are urgently needed and the products could also be applied in many different textile products in different aspects of the industry.

Basic Info about Textile Industry in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is a South Asia country with a population over 0.15 billion. Its economics structure is highly relying on the exportation and textile industry is one of the nation’s core industries. Bangladesh has a large need of imported clothes as well. There are basically a few factors influencing its textile & fabric industry: ample labor supply, experienced workers, the advancement of technologies, the policies from the government, the mass escalation and scale of relevant factories, the reduction in the tariffs of textile industry; GSP, GSP+ and the relevant supports from the international and so on.

The total amount of exportation of textile of Bangladesh is increasing rapidly. Their clothes are exported to over 100 nations and the total amount is over USD 14 billion. Bangladesh now is the second largest textile-exportation country which is only after China. In 2015, the exportation value of fabric products in Bangladesh is USD 28 billion and over 7.5 thousand textile factories- this includes over 2000 textile manufacturing factories and over 6000 clothes processing factories. There are over 4.8 million industrial workers in Bangladesh now. In 2018, the entrepreneurs in Bangladesh has invested a lot in the textile industry and built 19 spinning mills, 23 textile mills and 2 printing and dyeing mills. In 2019, the textile manufacturers in Bangladesh could supply 85% of raw materials required by domestic textile industries that are focusing on exportation. The textile products of Bangladesh could be entered to the 27 countries in the EU, Canada, Australia and Japan without paying any tariffs. However, Bangladesh is lack of raw materials and 75% of sewing threads and cloth are needed to be imported.

Bangladesh government also encourages the foreign trades & investment. Its government is now trying to make more trades and attract more investments from its eastern neighbors.

Application of Textile Silicone Oil in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, there are basically no factories or chemical enterprises that have the capacity to produce the textile chemicals like silicone softeners, silicone auxiliaries and so on. The relevant raw materials are mainly imported from India, Europe and China. It is since the large amount of importation of sewing thread for Bangladesh, the needed quantity of the silicone lubricants are large and as introduced in the last article, the lubricants of dimethyl silicone oil could grant the raw sewing thread flexibility, excellent electrical isolation, high heating resistance and many other unique physical & chemical properties.

Silicone oil is also used mainly as textile auxiliaries for Bangladesh’s textile industry for years and Bangladesh does not have the ability to produce them much. The auxiliaries could be used to reduce the manufacturing period and reduce the number of processing stages to increase the total working efficiency and effectiveness; it could also reduce the energy cost; the good silicone oil auxiliaries could also improve the effectiveness of coating inks and the quality of the inside and outside of the textile products; different auxiliaries could also award textile products different properties or functions to improve the corresponding effectiveness and the additional values.

Silicone oil softeners are widely used in Bangladesh as well, the main target of applying softeners are to make the surface of clothes to be plain and soft which could allow the customers to have a satisfaction of the final wearing clothes. The mechanism is that the silicone oil softeners could change the friction coefficient to allow the subtle slim structures between fabrics to be easier to move and to make the fibers or fabrics to be easier to be reshaped. The softness is the summary of these two changes caused by softeners. The clean & plain surfaces of clothes could also avoid any harmless on human skins. The silicone oil used for softeners is also environmental friendly and could be recycled easily which may be a strict entry criteria of EU nations and some other developed countries.

Growing Foreign Interests in Textile Industry of Bangladesh

It is since the government of Bangladesh is increasing the encouragement on the attraction of foreigners from both politically and economically aspects. There are many exhibitions start to be held in Bangladesh, and some of them have even more than 10 years.

Some of the exhibitions are specifically designed for textile industrial companies and people, for example, one famous exhibition DYE CHEM held by CHEM GLOBAL was just held in last September in Bangladesh. The series of the exhibitions were also held in other nations like Brazil, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

Also in the end of 2022, there are two long-history textile industry exhibitions which are TexTech Bangladesh International Expo and Bangladesh International Yarn & Fabric Show were held successfully as well. Both of these two are over 10 years old and they have contributed a lot to the domestic textile industry’s growth and development. These two exhibitions are also proving both of textile products from upstream and downstream which give the full industrial options for the visitors.

Summary

Not only Bangladesh, and not only even for the textile industry for Bangladesh, there are many unique core industries in other nations also have a large demand of silicone oil or silicone-oil-made products. Some other examples could be the automotive industry in Thailand, the cosmetic industry in some western European countries and many other goods example. Even for textile industry, the neighbors of Bangladesh like India and Pakistan also have developed textile industries thus there are also urgent needs of silicone oil auxiliaries there.