Gerald Cauthen, VP, Contempora Fabricstalk on Sustainability, AAPN Meeting, May 3, 2010, Miami

Contempora Fabrics onSUSTAINABILITY

Gerald Cauthen, VP, Contempora Fabricstalk on Sustainability, AAPN Meeting, May 3, 2010, Miami

I am Gerald Cauthen, Vice President of Manufacturing for a small company in Lumberton, North Carolina, ContemporaFabrics, Inc. We are a circular knitter in business for 38 yearsthis year. We began as a fine guage contract knitter and grew to what we are today. We have found that throughout our existence, we have had to constantly strive to achievesustainability just to exist in our industry.

Our company was founded by a sole owner, entrepreneur in 1972. Our only business was in contract knitting mostly in synthetics and limited cotton and poly cotton interlock. My partner,Ron Roach, joined the company 25 years ago this past week. Our owner decided to explore an ESOP plan for the employees of Contempora and in 1984, 40% of the company stock wasplaced in trust for the employees, along with debt of course. In 1988, we were able to put aplan together to purchase the balance of the stock and we took over ownership in September, 1988 with more debt, of course. We were scared that we could risk survival, but our options were limited. We repaid this debt over the next 12 years or so and are still here today with full employee ownership. We learned what sustainability was early on.

Gerald Cauthen at left, above

Gerald Cauthen, VP, Contempora Fabricstalk on Sustainability, AAPN Meeting, May 3, 2010, Miami

As I prepared for this panel, I admit that I had to look up the definition of sustainability. I found a simple one that I liked. It states "the capacity to endure". I also liked "an attempt to provide the best outcomes for human and natural environments both now and into the indefinitefuture". We have reinvented ourselves maybe a hundred times sincethe mid 90's. We moved away from contract knitting totally and begangreige sales to help control costs for our products and enhance efficiencies in our mill. We flirted with direct sales of finished products through establishment of converters. We finally settled on more direct sales because we felt we could get closer to the ultimate user of our products and learn what they want. Today, we have expanded our production base to include all circular knits and also added terry, body size, and 3 end fleece capacities. We actually bought machineryover the last five years to expand into the products listed above as others were closing. We included fine guage body size which is new to the market to reduce cutting room waste for fine guage tee shirtmanufacturing.

Gerald Cauthen

Gerald Cauthen, VP, Contempora Fabricstalk on Sustainability, AAPN Meeting, May 3, 2010, Miami

But our main topic is how responsible should we be as a participant in this environment we all share. I will list and comment on some of the things we have done. We gathered our managers, clerical staff, produc-tionsupervision, sales and Ron and me to brainstorm about what we should be doing for our environment. I was amazed at howeasy it is to get employees to buy into this concept. We developed their plan and agreedto support what was needed to work on ways to favorably impact ourenvironment through workplace improvement. 1. We have been baling all of our cardboard boxes where raw material comes in for years. So we had a start.

2. We added the collection of all of our tubes that yarns are wound onto. We always thought this was not possibleefficiently. Today we collect them and they go to the recycler - not to a landfill so the impossible is possible sometimes.

3. We saw the impact on the reduction of the waste amounts to the landfill, so we again looked at what was going in and decided to see if we could take more "stuff" out. We found that there was more plastic going in than we thought. We had bags covering incoming yarn packages, plastic on palletized yarns, bottles from our canteen, etc. Today we bale all of this and it goes to the recycler.

4. We worked with our largest finisher to reduce the plastic bags covering our rolls of fabric to reduce consumption and save cost here. Also, our finisher did not have to throw them into the landfill on his end. We have seen an estimate of 20%reduction here that we never thought possible. 5. We reduced the size of our ticket used to identify the fabric rolls themselves to save paper needed to identify our product.I have to admit that I struggle to read them sometimes with my eyesight but we have gotten accustomed to this. We also changed our printers to a heat sensitive print head which reduced wasted tickets and expensivetoner that we were using.

Gerald Cauthen, VP, Contempora Fabricstalk on Sustainability, AAPN Meeting, May 3, 2010, Miami

Gerald and Ron flank AAPN’s Sue Strickland

6. We have worked to change high energy consumption cooling and heating systems on the manufacturing floor to higher energy units.

7. We collect all paper products from our office environment and send to therecycler. We even take old reports and use the back for copying interoffice documents to save paper. We even reuse file folders several times until toofrayed.

8. We have removed old lighting and replaced with energy lighting on our manufacturing floor. We have been able to keep our electrical costs to levels that they were several years ago even though power costs have risen steadilyand will continue as we all know. We are exploring cheaper lighting in ourwarehouses as we speak.

9. We collect and send all fabric rags to recyclers.

10. We collect all left over yarns and sell to recyclers who make other products and export to countries for usage there.

11. We found that we can consolidate freight into larger shipments to reduce our freight costs and also make themovements of our fabrics more economical in diesel consumption. We have worked hard to attempt to ship in full loads to our finishers and you would be amazed to know with planning that this is possible.

12. We have lots of small things like replacing seals around all dock doors, turning off lights, changing our hot water heaters in bathrooms to "on demand" varieties, etc.

Gerald Cauthen, VP, Contempora Fabricstalk on Sustainability, AAPN Meeting, May 3, 2010, Miami

13. We eliminated duplicate reports that were not needed for daily management and saved paper.

14. We collect all worn metal machinery parts and send them to a local recycler

15. We collect all used lubricants from our machinery and have it picked up to recycle.

16. We continue to work on looking at new natural fibers through development. We have used bamboo, coconut, recycled polyesters, organic cottons, etc. Ron is constantly talking with yarn vendors and customers to learn of new natural products that is eco friendly.

I could go on and hopefully we will find even new things. I am proud to report that ourlandfill contributions have been reduced by over 80%. Not bad for a small brainstormingsession!! We know we have lots of work to do. As I said earlier, we are a small companybut we think we have made a small attempt to be better stewards of what we bring in and send out.

Gerald Speaking in Miami

Gerald Cauthen, VP, Contempora Fabricstalk on Sustainability, AAPN Meeting, May 3, 2010, Miami

Contempora Fabrics, Inc.351 Contempora Drive Lumberton, NC 28358Phone: 910 738 7131

www.contemporafabrics.com

Gerald CauthenVP, Manufacturing

gcauthenusc@aol.com