After seven months of planning, Glen Raven, N.C.-based Glen Raven Inc. will integrate the John
Boyle Co. Inc. manufacturing facility, located in Statesville, N.C., into its Technical Fabrics
Division. Glen Raven acquired John Boyle – a producer and distributor of specialty fabrics,
hardware and accessories – in May 2007.

With the integration of the John Boyle manufacturing operation, Glen Raven Technical Fabrics
– which already manufactures a number of products including GlenGuard® FR (fire retardant),
HaloTech® FR and SunBrite – will serve such major textile markets as automotive, industrial,
military, outdoor and protective.

“Aligning John Boyle with the Technical Fabrics Division gives Glen Raven a deeper portfolio
of well-respected brands and a solid global production base from which to serve our customers,”
said Hal Bates, marketing director, Glen Raven Technical Fabrics. “With the addition of John
Boyle’s manufacturing expertise and excellent products, we expect the expanded Technical Fabrics
Division to continue on its current growth path.”

Glen Raven will retain the 147 employees at the Statesville facility, which will be furnished
with Glen Raven signage over the next few months, will be retained.

January 22, 2008

Alice Manufacturing Co. Inc. — an Easley, S.C.-based vertically integrated manufacturer of greige
fabric and yarn for apparel, pocketing, home furnishings, industrial and institutional applications
— has announced plans to shutter Foster Plant in Easley on March 14. According to the company, the
increasing volume of low-cost finished goods from China and a shrinking customer base have
contributed to the decision to shut down the plant, which employs 250 associates and manufactures
print cloth largely for men’s apparel pocketing,.

At the same time, the company is expanding production capacity at nearby Ellison Plant, which
manufactures higher-end home furnishings fabrics and has maintained a strong customer base. The
expansion includes going from six to seven days a week of operation and adding machinery. The
company anticipates it will be able to transfer 50 to 60 of its Foster associates to Ellison, which
currently employs 195 associates.

“The Foster plant started operations in 1959, and it’s had a proud history of performance for
nearly 50 years,” said E. Smyth McKissick III, chairman, Alice Manufacturing. “During its history,
these folks have produced well over a billion yards of fabric serving a unique variety of markets
from apparel to home furnishings customers. I am very proud of the accomplishments of these fine
people, and I have deep admiration and respect for them,” he added, calling them the “heart and
soul” of the plant.

Alice Manufacturing was established in 1910 and has been owned by the McKissick family since
1923. The company has grown from a single plant to include several manufacturing facilities in
Easley producing polyester and polyester/cotton sales yarn for the weaving and knitting industries,
and cotton and polyester/cotton greige fabrics, which it sells to converters through its Alice
Mills Inc. sales division; and a separate New York City-based Ellison Division that markets
finished bedding products and accessories for retail sale. The company’s workforce currently totals
520 associates.

Displaced workers will receive employment assistance and severance benefits such as COBRA
health insurance, as well as priority notification of job openings within the company.

January 22, 2008

State College, Pa.-based NanoHorizons Inc. has partnered with High Point, N.C.-based Piedmont
Chemical Industries Inc. in a deal to develop antimicrobial/moisture-management/ultra
violet-resistant additives for cotton, nylon and polyester.

NanoHorizons — a manufacturer of antimicrobial performance additives for natural and man-made
fibers and fabrics — will provide its SmartSilver™ antimicrobial and anti-odor additive to Piedmont
— a specialty chemicals manufacturer —  for incorporation into a new water-based
moisture-management compound that can be applied to cotton, nylon and polyester fabrics during the
finishing process using standard equipment.

“We are very pleased to partner with Piedmont,” said Dr. Dan Hayes, director of operations at
NanoHorizons. “Their proven excellence in textile chemistry will ensure that the SmartSilver
performance benefits are maximized. Plus, their worldwide sales organization will guarantee that
the global textile market has full access to these remarkable new products.”

The companies also plan to develop an additive for man-made fiber extrusion. Piedmont
Chemical plans to market the additives as stand-alone products and in conjunction with commercial
surface fluid technologies, such as soil release, hydrophilic moisture management and wicking, and
fluid and soil repellency, according to Emil Delgado, vice president and COO, Piedmont Chemical.

Delgado added that alongside antimicrobial additives from NanoHorizons, these technologies “
will serve such critical markets as medical environments, hospitals and medical offices. Next, is
the high activity athletic and outdoor textile products followed with commercial and residential
home furnishings.”

Several products for a range of textile-product applications will be launched in the first
quarter of this year.

January 22, 2008

Tunisia-based
garment label manufacturer La Griffe Internationale S.A. has partnered with England-based hologram
producer Optaglio Ltd. in order to provide brand authentication solutions and eliminate brand
counterfeiting.

La Griffe hangtags and garment labels — like those it provides to brands such as Gap and
Adidas — will now incorporate Optaglio’s high-resolution Multimatrix® holograms, which use an open
verification methodology, and contain inspector-oriented hidden features and forensic features
identifiable only with specialty equipment in laboratory environments.

“This is an exciting collaboration for us,” said Slaheddine Ktari, general manager, La Griffe
Internationale. “With Optaglio’s unique technology, we can provide owners of signature brands an
unprecedented level of confidence that counterfeit product will not erode brand stature.”

January 22, 2008

A. Monforts Textilmaschinen GmbH & Co. KG, Germany, now offers newly redesigned compressive
shrinkage sanforizors for knitted and woven fabrics.

The machines — Monfortex for wovens and Toptex for knits — feature increased residual
shrinkage and production speeds, as well as new, more efficient automatic grinder and edge cooling
system, both of which extend service life of the belt. Simplified belt removal requires just one
shift rather than the two days associated with competitive sanforizors. New centralized water and
steam connections enable improved maintenance access, while new cooling-water filtration and
recovery techniques enable a 40-percent reduction in water consumption.



January 22, 2008

Pittsburgh-based Calgon Carbon Corp., a supplier of water and air treatment systems, has received a
wastewater treatment contract from Huntsman Textile Effects (Qingdao) Co. Ltd. — a China-based
subsidiary of Huntsman Special Effects, Switzerland — to provide activated carbon adsorption
vessels and reactivation services valued at more than US$1.5 million.

Huntsman (Qingdao) has installed three Calgon Carbon carbon adsorption vessels for wastewater
treatment at the plant, which blends, standardizes and dries textile dyes; and formulates and
distributes textile chemicals. The vessels contain 60,000 pounds of activated carbon, and Calgon
Carbon will remove, transport and reactivate expended carbon; and supply replacement carbon for the
system.

“We are very pleased that Huntsman has chosen Calgon Carbon to provide wastewater treatment
at its facility in Qingdao,” said John Stanik, chairman and CEO, Calgon Carbon. “We are committed
to provide products and services to both Chinese and multinational companies to make air and water
safer and cleaner in China.”

January 22, 2008

US textile industry representatives in Washington are concerned that the federal government’s
spending plans for Fiscal Year 2008 offer little hope for stepped-up enforcement of trade
agreements and battling fraud, while cutting back on funding for research designed to make the
industry more competitive.

The massive $515 billion multi-agency spending bill passed by Congress essentially leaves
funding for textile-related government activities at FY 2007 levels and will unlikely stimulate
greater efforts in areas domestic manufacturers say are important to their survival.


Funding for the Department of Commerce, which monitors import and export trends and enforces
anti-dumping and countervailing duty laws, remains flat. The office of the US Trade Representative
(USTR), which negotiates trade agreements and is the main watchdog for monitoring China’s
compliance with its World Trade Organization agreements, also will be funded at about 2007 levels.
The USTR has been devoting many of its resources to negotiating free trade agreements, and US
textile industry interests are concerned that this is being done at the expense of enforcement of
existing agreements.

Textile lobbyists in Washington see the funding as a major setback in their efforts to get
more government control over surging imports from China. As one lobbyist put it, “With $96.6
billion in Chinese textile and apparel imports in the past 12 months, there are a lot of
opportunities for mischief.”

Cass Johnson, president of the National Council for Textile Organizations, sees the funding
as a major setback for efforts by the US industry to get better enforcement of trade agreements,
particularly with China. He notes that the office of the USTR currently has only one attorney
assigned to monitoring China’s WTO compliance, in spite of the fact that there is a need to
increase resources for enforcement. He is equally concerned that US Customs and Border Protection
is not devoting sufficient staff and efforts to crack down on illegal textile and apparel imports.

As a result of the Christmas-time flap over unsafe imports from China, the Consumer Products
Safety Commission received a substantial boost in its funding. While US textile manufacturers hope
some of the funding for the understaffed agency can go toward creating a national flammability
standard for bedding, the agency is most likely to concentrate on imports of toys and other
children’s products.

Long-standing government support for textile and apparel research at the National Textile
Center (NTC) and the Textile Clothing Technology Corp. ([TC]
²) took a major hit, as funding for the coming year was cut to $4.7 million compared
with last year’s $16 million. Officials at [TC]
² and the NTC have agreed to a split that would give [TC]
² $1.7 million and NTC $3 million, and they are in the process of developing scaled-down
project proposals.



January 15, 2008

World cotton production is forecast at 33.9 million hectares in 2008-09. This is a
less-than-1-percent increase despite the 14-percent increase in international cotton prices
projected for 2007-08. Cotton prices are not increasing as much as prices of most competing crops
in 2007-08, and these price relationships will affect planting decisions in 2008-09. Production is
expected to increase slightly in mainland China and India, remain stable in Pakistan, and decline
further in the United States.



Increase In The World Average Yield

Cotton production in the rest of the world is projected to rise by 5 percent to 11 million
hectares. A projected 4-percent increase in the average yield could lead world cotton production to
increase by 5 percent to 26.9 million tons in 2008-09. Global cotton mill use is projected at 27.5
million tons in 2008-09, only 1-percent higher than in 2007-08 because of the expectation that
cotton prices will remain firm. As a result, a significant gap between world cotton production and
mill use is expected to persist next season, resulting in a possible further decline in world
cotton stocks to 10.7 million tons — a decrease of 5 percent — at the end of July 2009.

World Cotton Trade

World cotton trade is forecast to be quite stable at 8.7 million tons in 2008-09. A small
increase in mainland Chinese imports could offset a decline in imports by the rest of the world.
The Chinese Ministry of Finance announced at the end of December 2007 that the duty applied to
sliding-scale duty import quotas — quotas supplementary to the regular 894,000-ton import quota
associated with the 1-percent duty — would vary from 5 to 40 percent in 2008, versus 6 to 40
percent in 2007. However, no openings of sliding-scale duty quotas for 2008 have been announced
yet.


World Cotton Production In 2007-08

The world production is estimated at 25.7 million tons in 2007-08, down 4 percent from last
season, whereas world cotton mill use is forecast up 2 percent to 27.2 million tons. The projected
gap between production and mill use of 1.5 million tons in 2007-08 implies an 11-percent reduction
in world cotton stocks to 11.2 million tons by the end of July 2008. World cotton imports are
forecast up 9 percent to 8.9 million tons, driven by expected larger Chinese imports than last
season — 3.2 million tons versus 2.3 million tons.

Exports from the United States, India and Brazil are expected to increase, resulting in
gains in market share for these countries. However, exports from Uzbekistan, the CFA zone in
Africa, and Australia are expected to decline.

The Cotlook A Index — produced by Cotlook Ltd., an England-based cotton news group —
averaged 69 US cents per pound in the first five months of 2007-08, 10 cents higher than during the
same period of the previous year. The Bremen Cotton Report Secretariat, using the ICAC Price Model
2007, forecasts a season-average Cotlook A Index of 67 cents per pound in 2007-08 — the 95 percent
confidence interval is between 61 and 72 cents per pound. The main variables in this model are the
stocks-to-mill-use ratio in the world-excluding-China and the stocks-to-mill-use ratio in China.
The projected price increase in 2007-08 is the result of an expected significant decrease in the
stocks-to-mill-use ratio in the world-excluding-China from 58 percent in 2006-07 to 53 percent in
2007-08. This price forecast takes into account the average Cotlook A Index between August and
December 2007.



January 15, 2008

The National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) has developed a new online reporting system
for textile and apparel companies to report fraud they encounter in the marketplace to US Customs
and Border Protection. The program is designed to help improve the policing of illegal textile and
apparel imports.

In announcing the program, NCTO Vice President Mike Hubbard said: “Customs fraud has risen to
become the number-one issue we get calls about from our member companies. Our members are extremely
frustrated because they see high levels of fraud without a corresponding increase in Customs
activity.”


NCTO says increasing problems have developed particularly with trade involving NAFTA/CAFTA-DR
countries.

NCTO has been meeting with Customs officials regarding what that organization says is a “
sharp drop-off of seizures and detentions” resulting from the textile division being moved out of
the Operations Division into a policy branch and the failure of Customs to hire new textile
enforcement personnel.

The NCTO reporting form, developed in consultation with Customs officials, is available
at 
www.ncto.org under “Report
Customs Fraud.”



January 15, 2008

Richmond, Va.-based Performance Fibers has signed a multiyear agreement with Zhejiang GuXianDao
Industrial Fibre Co. Ltd.  whereby GuXianDao will exclusively supply Performance Fibers with
high-tenacity and low-shrinkage polyester fiber yarn for resale in North, Central and South
America, as well as India and Australia.

According to Performance Fibers, the agreement will enable it to enlarge its product portfolio and
provide customers with more global sourcing options. 

“Zhejiang GuXianDao Industrial Fibre Co. has consistently demonstrated a strong commitment
to superior quality and safety — both factors we value highly,” said Fred Indermaur, vice
president, general manager — Americas, Performance Fibers. “Through this agreement, our full range
of low-shrinkage and high-tenacity product offerings will be competitive with domestic and offshore
producers.”

January 15, 2008