Freudenberg Nonwovens, a business group within the Freudenberg Group, has announced plans to
reorganize its staple fiber business at its headquarters in Weinheim, Germany. The company will
reduce production capacity, citing reduced demand in the apparel industry, which has been
substituting increasing amounts of lower-priced woven and knitted interlinings for traditional
staple fiber nonwoven products.

As part of the restructuring, Freudenberg Nonwovens will close a production plant, likely
impacting 52 associates. In addition, the company will introduce more flexibility and faster
response within the Weinheim staple fiber business by systematically realigning it with the
apparel, filtration, medical and industrial market segments, including simplifying cooperation
between sales and production and allowing each division to pursue its own strategy.

Going forward, the company’s Interlinings Division will focus on its core business and new
developments, including new products and applications such as elastic nonwovens for outer fabric
applications.

Established in 1936 in Weinheim, Freudenberg Nonwovens today operates 21 manufacturing and
processing facilities in 13 countries and employs more than 3,150 associates. The company’s 2011
sales totaled more than 660 million euros.

September 11, 2012

Neenah, Wis.-based Appleton Mfg. Division reports that existing core cutting equipment now may be
retrofitted with its Automated Core Cutting System.

The system features two components – the parent core feeding system and the v-tray for
loading cores onto the core cutter – and is designed modularly to enable it to adapt to a range of
requirements and scenarios from low-volume, single-level delivery to high-volume, complex
requirements containing multiple components.

Appleton reports the Automated system offers benefits including increased productivity and
production flexibility, easy handling of complex production runs and reduced labor costs.

September 22, 2012

Glen Raven, N.C.-based technical textiles manufacturer Glen Raven Inc. has selected Stamford,
Conn.-based Pitney Bowes Inc.’s SendSuite Live™ logistics management solution to manage Web orders
and other parcel shipments at its Tri Vantage distribution division, which ships 400,000 parcels
annually.

SendSuite Live is a fully scalable global logistics management platform that can be easily
integrated into a company’s internal system, according to Pitney Bowes. The solution will provide
Glen Raven with accurate shipment pricing at time of order and visibility to total shipping charges
of small parcel shipments. It also will offer cost savings opportunities by providing access to a
range of parcel carriers and services, Pitney Bowes reports.

“Having experienced considerable growth through acquisition of distributors over the past
few years, our company now demands better management of our shipping operations,” said David Hall,
director, IT applications, Glen Raven. “Access to the versatility and scalability that SendSuite
Live provides will give us that, ensuring a strong logistics management platform that will support
our growth in the future and provide the analytics we have long sought to monitor our efficiency
and success.”

September 11, 2012

As mentioned two weeks ago, this year’s International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) Meeting will
take place October 7-12 at the Congress Centre Kursaal Interlaken, in Switzerland. The theme of the
congress is “Shaping Sustainability in the Cotton Value Chain.” Over the next few weeks, the Rupp
Report will focus on this event with a selection of issues related to the congress agenda. This
week, the eye is on Switzerland and its organizing committee.

Long Tradition

Switzerland has a very long tradition in the entire textile business. From the past,
insiders divided the country into five basic sectors: silk, cotton, embroidery, narrow fabrics, and
chemicals and finishing. For centuries, Switzerland, and mainly the Zurich area with all its silk
spinners and weavers around Lake Zurich, was the center of the global silk trade, up to the 1980s,
when the Chinese started to trade silk on their own and that silk became a commodity.

Cotton was located in the old town of St. Gallen. After the Industrial Revolution began in
Britain, the Swiss cotton spinners discovered hydropower. They placed countless spinning mills
along countless rivers throughout the region of the mid and eastern part of Switzerland. Most of
those mills have disappeared today.

Embroidery goes along with cotton. St. Gallen is still the center of embroidery in
Switzerland. Most of the embroidered fabrics, which can be seen on the high fashion catwalks around
the globe, are coming from St. Gallen.

The ribbon and narrow fabrics industry settled with the arrival of the French Huguenots in
the cantons of Basel and Aargau, where some of them are still producing narrow fabrics and ribbons.
The early expression for ribbons was “passements,” so the people were called “passementiers.”

Last, but not least, are chemicals and, consequently, finishing. This industry started
centuries ago near or in the town of Basel, where some either still have their headquarters or have
moved recently to Singapore. Most of these companies started their businesses with chemicals and
dyestuffs for textile dyeing.

Today, Switzerland is still among the biggest suppliers of high quality textile machinery,
and its machinery is recognized for its reliability and excellent price/quality ratio.

Host Country

But these historic facts are not the only reasons for hosting the 71st ICAC meeting in
Interlaken: It’s more that the issues to be discussed at the event go along with the people’s
increasing environmental consciousness. On top of that, Switzerland has developed a quite
successful business sector with sustainable textile products in some department stores and retail
shops. Or, as Marie-Gabrielle Ineichen-Fleisch – state secretary of the State Secretariat for
Economic Affairs (SECO), and a member of the co-organizing committee – said: “What has started as
real experimental pioneer work has become a matter of course – for enterprises as well as
consumers. In order to advance this case and to share experiences, we wish to follow up during the
ICAC conference in Interlaken on previous discussions on sustainability that have taken place over
the past years.”

Ineichen-Fleisch also mentioned another reason SECO became active in this sector: “The
potential for sustainability in the cotton value chain is also the reason why Switzerland addresses
the issue as an element of the work of the Economic Cooperation and Development Division of the
SECO. The aim of these cotton related activities is to improve livelihoods and thus contribute to
poverty alleviation in developing countries and countries in transition through trade promotion.”

Set And Improve Framework Conditions

According to SECO, one approach toward reaching the goal is to set and improve framework
conditions. In this regard, SECO is engaged through Geneva-based IDEAS Centre to support the Cotton
4 — comprising the African countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali — in order to strengthen
their negotiation capacity and, therefore, to better defend their interests in the Doha Development
Round, as only the informed and effective influence on cotton subsidy programs may contribute to
reaching acceptable cotton price levels. IDEAS is an independent nonprofit organization that
provides support to low-income countries to help them integrate into the world trading system.

Another approach is to strengthen competitiveness of cotton market participants through
differentiation of the products because this supports better integration into the world market. In
this regard, SECO works along the cotton supply chain to implement private voluntary sustainability
systems. SECO has been a leading supporter of fair trade and organic production, and it has helped
to introduce sustainable consumption and production patterns through projects in Kyrgyzstan and
West Africa, working in cooperation with Switzerland-based nongovernmental organization (NGO)
Helvetas Swiss to develop sustainable cotton value chains.

The program has benefited approximately 10,000 cotton farmers in the partner countries by
providing increased incomes, improved working conditions and an improved social infrastructure in
their villages. In addition to supporting niche market sustainability systems, SECO has long
supported the establishment among multiple stakeholders of sustainability initiatives and
roundtables for agricultural commodities.

SECO also contributes to the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), which aims to bring
sustainability into the mainstream in the cotton value chain. During the 2011-12 season, BCI and
its partners worked with 125,000 cotton farmers in Brazil, India, Pakistan and West Africa. The
initiative also is involved in activities in China, and many other countries have expressed an
interest in participating in its program.

Let’s give Ineichen-Fleisch the final words in this Rupp Report: “As a host, we believe that
Interlaken will be the perfect place to discuss and try out new forms of dialogue: small and
scenic, situated between mountains and lakes, this venue will help us to focus and have a frank
exchange of views. We also hope that new stakeholders will take the opportunity to join in and
enrich our discussions.”

ICAC

The International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC), based in Washington, was founded in
1939. At that time, global cotton stocks totaled nearly 25 million bales, more than half of which
were located in the United States. ICAC states its mission is “to assist governments in fostering a
healthy world cotton economy. The role of the ICAC is to raise awareness, to provide information
and to serve as a catalyst for cooperative action on issues of international significance.”

September 4, 2012

Glen Raven Custom Fabrics — a division of Glen Raven, N.C.-based Glen Raven Inc. — is investing $10
million to open a specialty Sunbrella® yarn plant in Burlington, N.C., and will add 30 jobs in the
process. The company reports it is opening the plant in response to increasing demand it has seen
for Sunbrella fabrics woven with specialty yarn colors and constructions.

“Sunbrella brand fabrics are design-driven, which requires new colors and new specialty yarn
blends with every season,” said Randy Blackston, vice president of operations, Glen Raven Custom
Fabrics. “This new yarn plant will enhance our ability to meet the market’s growing demand for
Sunbrella fabrics in fashion-oriented colors and styles.”

The company is retrofitting a 130,000-square-foot facility that previously housed its Ultra
Spun division operations. The new Burlington Yarn plant — which is similar to Glen Raven’s
Sunbrella® plant in Anderson, S.C., and which is expected to open in late summer 2013 — will be
equipped with a modular, highly automated yarn manufacturing system that features lean
manufacturing processes and state-of-the-art air handling systems, according to the company. Yarns
produced at the plant will be sent to Glen Raven’s Anderson fabric facility to be woven into
Sunbrella fabrics.

“While our Anderson, S.C., and Norlina, N.C., Sunbrella yarn facilities are highly flexible
and capable of supporting a broad array of yarn and fabric SKUs, our new plant will take this quick
change capability to an entirely new level,” Blackston said. “The process of design engineering and
machine selection began two years ago and will result in a unique operation focused on specialty,
blended and novelty yarns for Sunbrella fabrics.”

Glen Raven will transfer 50 employees currently working at its Burlington Link Spinning
facility — which it is making plans to repurpose — to the Burlington Yarn plant, and also will add
30 new positions to the workforce.

September 4, 2012

U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Ron Kirk was in Cambodia and Vietnam last week to attend meetings
of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economic ministers; the inaugural U.S.-ASEAN
Business Summit; a meeting with Cambodian Economic Minister Cham Prasidh; and meetings with
Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Van Ninh and other senior Vietnamese
officials.

Cambodia hosted the ASEAN meetings, following which Kirk stressed the Obama administration’s
commitment to furthering strong trade and investment relationships between the United States and
the ASEAN region.

“The United States’ commitment to the ASEAN region is long-term,” Kirk said. “The ASEAN
countries together are already a major trading partner for the United States, but we — and the
American business community — see enormous potential to grow our mutual trade and investment as
ASEAN pursues its own objectives of liberalizing trade in the region, harnessing the digital
economy and reducing economic disparities among its members.”

After meeting with Cham, Kirk announced that the United States and Cambodia would explore
the possibility of entering into a bilateral investment treaty that would provide investors with
enhanced market access, various protections from harmful government treatment and a binding
arbitration mechanism in cases of breaches of the treaty.

“A bilateral investment treaty between the United States and Cambodia would encourage
investment by improving investment climates, promoting market-based economic reforms, and
strengthening the rule of law,” Kirk said. “Our decision to explore this possibility highlights
progress made by Cambodia in fostering a policy environment that treats private investment in an
open, transparent, and non-discriminatory way.”

Kirk then met with government officials in Vietnam to discuss the U.S.-Vietnamese bilateral
trade and investment relationship; issues concerning the Trans-Pacific Partnership regional trade
agreement that is being negotiated among the United States, Vietnam and seven other countries
around the Pacific Rim; and goals for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum taking place this
week in Vladivostok, Russia.

“The bilateral relationship between the United States and Vietnam has grown rapidly into a
robust and mutually beneficial one. We have the opportunity to further this relationship
significantly by quickly resolving concerns such as the further opening of Vietnam’s market to U.S.
beef and other bilateral issues, and more broadly by working together to rapidly conclude the
Trans-Pacific Partnership,” Kirk said. “Now is the time to make the decisions necessary to bring
the TPP to fruition as a high-standard, 21st-century agreement that will benefit all partners. I am
pleased that Vietnam shares our eagerness to make progress at this month’s round of talks.”

The 14th round of TPP negotiations will be held September 6-15 in Leesburg, Virginia.

September 4, 2012