China'S Wool Industry: Where Is The Road?

Wool is one of the earliest natural fibers used in the history of textiles. Wool is soft and elastic.

In recent years, the development situation of China's wool industry is not optimistic.

Domestic lamb prices remain high, and wool prices are sluggish, leading to herdsmen abandoning fine wool sheep. Raw wool relies heavily on imports, and more than 80% of wool comes from abroad.

China's wool textile industry has become a highly dependent industry in the international market.

Internationally, fierce market competition has made the domestic wool textile enterprises lose the international market. The first choice is to turn to the domestic market. The competition in the domestic market is becoming increasingly fierce. A large number of small and medium-sized enterprises are facing the choice of life and death.

If enterprises fail, there may be a series of economic and social problems such as debts, labor disputes and migrant workers' reflow. On the other hand, as the traditional market of Chinese Woollen Textiles, the EU countries that account for 60% of the consumption of Chinese woollen products begin to reduce expenditure, reduce the expenditure on high grade clothing and reduce foreign orders, which seriously affects the survival and survival of domestic wool textile enterprises.

How to break the stalemate and revitalize the Chinese wool industry is a question worth pondering.

Development of wool industry in China

With the deepening development of reform and opening up and the continuous improvement of people's living standards, the number of goats and sheep farmers in China has been increasing, and wool production has continued to increase.

Especially in the past ten years, in the background of the decline of wool production in the world, China's wool production has increased steadily (Fig. 1). The output of semi fine wool has increased greatly, the output of coarse wool and cashmere has also increased, and the output of fine wool has basically remained stable (Fig. 2).

At present, the gross output of Chinese wool is basically maintained at over 400 thousand tons. In 2009, China's wool output was 412 thousand and 100 tons, and the total output was only second to Australia.

Judging from the proportion of different types of wool, the output of Chinese fine wool, semi fine wool and other wool (coarse wool and hybrid wool) is about 1/3 (Figure 3). The proportion of semi fine wool and cashmere has slightly increased, while the proportion of fine wool has decreased significantly.

In 1989, the production of fine wool accounts for 50.8% of the total output of wool. In the late 90s of last century, because of the unreasonable price of wool and mutton, the phenomenon of "reverse pformation" appeared in the fine wool sheep producing areas. The fine wool sheep gene was seriously degraded, seriously affecting the offspring's character and wool production ability. In 2009, the proportion of fine wool production accounted for 34.1% of wool, and domestic wool textile enterprises relied more on imported high-quality Australian wool. The domestic wool was mainly used for carpet and furniture (such as seat back), and the real Merino wool accounted for only about 10% of the wool output.

Although China's wool production has developed rapidly, due to the huge capacity of wool processing and consumption, more than half of the wool industry raw materials are imported from abroad each year. The fine wool used in worsted fabrics is mainly dependent on imported wool from Australia. Australia has become the largest supplier of wool to China (Figure 4). In 2009, China imported 175 thousand tons of Australian wool and accounted for more than half of Australia's gross exports.

Research shows that China currently has 4 million 80 thousand processing capacity of spinning spindles, which needs about 350 thousand tons of raw materials per year. Although the net gross domestic product is 127 thousand tons, the actual acquisition of wool is up to 110 thousand tons, accounting for only 30% of the demand. China's domestic wool supply and demand gap is larger.

Challenges and opportunities for China's wool industry development

(1) challenges and difficulties

Judging from the actual situation, the situation of China's wool industry is not optimistic, facing a series of severe challenges and difficulties.

1, China's wool production is backward and its product quality is not high.

Most of China's wool production is scattered by farmers, with small scale and small farmers.

The proportion of small farmers in China accounted for 98.4%, the products provided by small farmers accounted for 73.1%, and the household size of small farmers was only 5, and the total scale of all farmers was only 6.7.

Lack of funds for the purchase of advanced equipment and introduction of advanced technology in the field of pasture breeding, grassland maintenance, introduction of fine sheep, sheep breeding, shearing, wool grading and packaging, etc., with low mechanization, lack of specialized division and cooperation, low labor efficiency, and lack of regulatory economic benefits.

In order to solve the problem of grassland degradation, the State advocates sheep breeding.

However, sheep breeding technology is difficult to master, and sheep in captivity are prone to epidemic diseases.

If this problem can not be well resolved, China's future wool production is also very difficult to grow.

Although the quality of wool in the main producing areas of China's fine wool sheep has been improved, the quality of domestic wool has a large gap with that of developed countries. The fineness of wool is mainly from 60~64 to 66~70, and more than 66 fine wool is growing year by year. However, the ratio of fine wool and semi fine wool in China is still very low, and the output of 64-70 wool can not be 1/10.

The production of fine wool sheep is affected by the development of mutton sheep industry. The phenomenon of "down to change" is serious, and the fine wool sheep have the trend of degeneration. This means that the disappearance of fine wool sheep will not only cause the quality of wool to drop, but also the output of decades has not been produced.

2, China's domestic wool production is insufficient, unable to meet the demand for raw materials.

A large number of exports of wool products and consumption in the domestic market have made China a big consumer of processing wool.

In 2008 alone, for example, 300 thousand tons of sheep's raw wool can be produced in China, and 87 thousand tons of gross wool can be washed after washing. In the same year, China's total use of washed wool reached 334 thousand tons, and domestic wool could only meet the demand of 26%.

At the same time, due to the rapid development of domestic mutton industry, the development of wool industry has been a certain impact, and the self-sufficiency ability of domestic wool industry has been further reduced.

Especially in fine and super fine wool fabrics, the frivolity and cooling of clothing textiles directly lead to the pursuit of fiber fineness for woollen fabrics.

Australia's wool exporter developed an ultra-fine wool fiber with an average diameter of 16.5 to 19.5 m, and then developed a super fine wool with an average diameter of 13~16 m.

China's imports of this fine and super fine wool have shown strong growth momentum.

At present, China implements quota management on the import of wool, low taxes on the wool in the quotas, and a high tax rate outside the quota.

According to the WTO trade rules, tariff reduction outside the quota is an inevitable trend, so imported wool has more competitive advantage.

From the perspective of future development, the price of wool in China's market will be gradually integrated with the international market, which will probably lead to a significant decline in China's wool production.

Driven by interests, Chinese wool textile enterprises are, of course, willing to buy cheap and cheap imported wool, so that domestic wool can only be at a disadvantage in competition.

It can be envisaged that China's wool industry will face a crisis of life and death if cheap Australian wool is to occupy the Chinese market.

Once China's wool industry has collapsed, imported wool will have the conditions to monopolize the Chinese market. It is worth thinking twice whether the Chinese wool industry will reproduce the doom of the soybean industry.

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3. China's wool industry is backward in its management and service system.

Our country lacks strict management in breeding, wool production, social services, division of labor, division of labor, pasture construction, quality inspection, and wool sales, especially the market system for the circulation of wool.

Farmers and herdsmen do not have unified sales organizations. They have low bargaining power in the market, and farmers and herdsmen are hard to sell and sell at low prices.

The lack of wool reserve system and the fluctuation of international wool prices have led to instability of domestic wool prices.

The lack of auction links in China's wool distribution system also makes it difficult to achieve high quality and good price for quality wool, to some extent, and easily discourage the enthusiasm of wool producers.

Chinese wool has not been graded well from the beginning of production. At the same time, some wool quality inspection institutions lack advanced professional testing equipment, and it is difficult to make authoritative identification of wool quality. This has not only affected the wool producers' income, but also brought a lot of procurement problems to the downstream wool textile industry. Some wool spinning enterprises even believe that if the price of wool is linked to the quality of wool, the purchase of imported wool is still more cost-effective than buying domestically made wool, which leads to the fact that domestic wool does not have international competitiveness.

4, other fiber products pose a threat to wool consumption.

The cost of spinning and weaving wool is higher than that of other competitive fibers.

In general, the cost of spinning and weaving per kilogram of wool is 35~120 dollars, while other competitive fibers are 10~35 dollars. When processing woollen clothes, the most expensive part is spinning and twisting.

In these two links, the competitive fiber advantage of wool is particularly obvious.

The main challenge to wool consumption is cotton products.

With its natural and comfortable textile properties, cotton fibers are replacing the location of wool in the minds of consumers.

In China's apparel retail market, the value share of cotton has increased to 43%, and the volume share has stabilized at 54%, while the value share of wool is only 17%, and the share of quantity is less, accounting for only 5%.

Over the past three years, the share of cotton clothing in the Chinese market has remained stable.

In addition, linen clothing has been widely used in casual wear and clothing in spring and summer.

With the characteristics of lightness and warmth, silk has occupied a certain market share in bedding consumption.

Synthetic and synthetic fibers also pose a threat to wool consumption.

In the domestic textile consumer market, man made fibers occupy the dominant position in the available fibers. In the 15 years of 1995~2009, man made fibers increased by three times, resulting in 68% of the fiber used in spinning.

The competitiveness of wool, especially the Chinese Merino wool used in the domestic market of woolen fabrics and cheap woven fabrics, is threatened by man-made fibers.

Man-made fibers include not only cheap polyester fiber and acrylic fiber, but also some of the best quality man-made fiber products, which means that man-made fiber is not only a low-end consumer market, but also some high value share market may be occupied by it.

Generally speaking, wool is inferior to cotton and man-made fibers in many aspects such as quality, style, fashion, color and price. Especially, it is easy to shrink, it is not easy to store, it is not washable, and it is not easy to maintain.

Despite the emergence of easy care and machine washable woollen fabrics in the market, consumers still consider it difficult to care for wool fabrics.

This is also a main reason why wool is not suitable for making casual wear.

With the increase of consumers' income, they prefer to buy fashionable clothes to show their individuality and taste.

(two) potential and advantages

China's wool industry is facing challenges as well as considerable potential and advantages.

1. Stable sources of raw materials

China has a vast territory and vast grasslands. Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and other pastoral areas are the natural pastures of wool sheep in China.

In other agricultural areas, with the state's vigorous efforts to promote animal husbandry, all kinds of feeding houses and half shed sheep farms are spreading everywhere in China.

Because China has a history of sheep raising for thousands of years, the majority of the people have good breeding experience, and raising sheep in small and medium scale in ordinary farmers is also very common.

Over the past hundred years, China has introduced foreign fine wool sheep to hybridize the original indigenous sheep and bred 19 fine wool sheep of China, including Merino sheep, northeast fine wool sheep and Xinji fine wool sheep. It produces about 100000 tons of fine wool annually.

The breeding of these varieties is of great historic significance to the development of China's wool industry.

2, advanced processing technology

The use of wool in China has been over 5000 years. After the efforts and explorations of the working people, we have been mature in the processing technology of wool from collecting to weaving, and it is widely grasped by the masses.

In recent years, with the progress of science and technology, the processing technology of wool has made progress in varying degrees.

Although we have been deficient in the fine and super fine wool spinning process, we have introduced advanced wool production and processing technology from Australia and other advanced textile industries in recent years. At present, China's wool processing technology has reached the world's leading level.

3. Widely recognized quality

Wool, as a pure natural fiber, has many excellent qualities.

More importantly, wool keeps a very sharp image in the eyes of consumers. It is regarded as a symbol of status and status, the highest grade and the best quality fiber.

Most urban white-collar workers regard quality as the most important characteristic of professional wear. The good quality characteristics of wool make it have more and more supporters in the field of formal clothing and so on.

With the process of urbanization in China, the demand for professional clothing will increase year by year, and wool, especially superfine wool, is also facing a good opportunity for further increase in demand.

With the continuous improvement of domestic wool scientific research level, the quality of domestic wool has also been improved.

In the end of 2009, the Chinese Merino super fine wool textile was successfully developed by adopting the technology of wool fineness gene biological detection. The Xinjiang Academy of agricultural science and technology developed the fine wool textile of China. The fineness of wool can reach more than 80 levels, which greatly improved the spinnability and spinning number of domestic wool and reached the leading level in China.

4, huge domestic consumption market.

China is the world's largest wool consumer. By 2000, China's wool consumption accounts for 21% of the world's total.

Despite the rising global wool prices in 2002 and 2003, China accounted for 17% of the world's wool consumption in 2004, ranking first in the world.

The amount of wool used in garment production accounts for 27% of the world's total, which is 1/3 of the total wool used for clothing in the world.

Faced with such a huge consumer market, China's wool industry has a very rare development space compared with its counterparts in other countries.

5, significant export markets

In the past few decades, due to relatively low labor costs, wool processing and textile production have been pferred from developing countries such as Australia, France and other developed countries to developing countries such as China and India. China has become the largest producer and exporter of textiles and clothing, of which 50% of the total export volume of wool is exported.

The importance of the export market is mainly reflected in the share of wool.

In 2006, 4 tons per 10 tons of wool used in China's wool textile industry were used in the export market.

In 2008 alone, China exported 28 thousand and 100 tons of wool, 18 thousand and 300 tons of wool, 80 thousand and 400 tons of plush, 104 million 600 thousand meters of wool, 1 million 400 thousand of export blankets, 363 million of wool knitted garments, 56 million 250 thousand of wool woven garments, 4118 tons of wool and cashmere sweaters, and 14 million 370 thousand of cashmere sweaters.

To some extent, such a huge volume of exports alleviated the uncertainty of the added value of wool products brought about by China's fixed exchange rate, which provided an opportunity for China's wool industry to participate in the equal competition in the international market, and provided a guarantee for the future development of China's wool industry in a broader field.

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The way to develop wool industry in China

The above analysis shows that the development of China's wool industry is not small but the situation is grim. The difficulties faced both have their own problems and the challenges brought by the foreign wool market.

The output, quality and price of domestic wool can not meet the needs of the Chinese market. The turmoil in the international wool market and the contradiction between supply and demand will still exist for a long time.

China's wool industry should be further developed, not only to make positive preparations for future possible opportunities, but also to overcome a series of development obstacles.

The motive force of the development of the sheep industry lies in the economic benefits, and the economic benefits are reflected in the selling price of the main products and the relationship between the supply and demand of the market.

Looking forward to the future, to adapt to the changes of wool market at home and abroad, the textile wool will gradually develop towards fine branch and super fine branch, and actively developing fine fine wool sheep will be the inevitable choice and the only way out for China's wool industry.

This is because people's demand for clothing gradually develops towards natural, comfortable, light and soft trend. With the progress of textile technology, the higher the value of wool textile is, the higher the added value of its products. Wool textile enterprises have a significant increase in demand for wool under 21.5 m (66 branches).

At present, China's textile industry consumes 30~35 tons of wool throughout the year, while the annual output of domestic wool is only about 120 thousand tons, and the self-sufficiency rate is 1/3. Therefore, as long as the price and quality are competitive, the market potential of China's fine wool sheep is very considerable.

In terms of sheep breeds, we need to accelerate the breeding of fine wool sheep and even super fine wool sheep, because the current market demand is mainly 18.1 to 21.5 m of fine wool or even finer wool.

For the coarse wool with fineness of more than 28 m, though it can not meet the requirements of the new textile garment, it just meets the needs of the bedding, especially in the production of wool bedding.

For the wool industry which is not satisfactory in wool quality, this field is also a development space that can not be ignored.

In the aspect of wool quality, we should first solve the problem that wool is not easy to care for the consumers, so that the super washing / easy care technology in sweater is further promoted, and the image of wool products can be improved.

In the marketing of wool products, we should pay more attention to the color, fashion and style of wool products. At the same time, we should exert the advantages of good softness and high quality of wool products to cater to the psychological needs of consumers.

And by emphasizing the softness and permeability of wool, we can enhance the competitiveness of wool products in leisure sports clothing.

If we can combine the natural advantages of wool with modern animal husbandry, textile and retailing industries, the development prospect of China's wool industry will be very broad.

Policy recommendations for developing wool industry in China

The wool industry is an important part of China's animal husbandry. It is not only a dominant industry in the northern minority areas, but also a major industry for the residents in the vast pastoral areas. It has a very important social and economic status.

Based on the analysis and description of the development and current situation of wool production and trade, and the challenges and opportunities faced by China's wool industry, some policy recommendations that are conducive to the development of China's wool industry are put forward.

1. The development of wool production from expanding the quantity of rearing to developing individual potential of sheep production

In the future, we should continue to strengthen the ecological construction and protection of grassland, and turn the development direction of Chinese wool production to the goal of improving the wool quality and wool quality of the sheep.

Through the popularization of practical supporting technology, the coverage rate of sheep's good seed was improved, the management level of feeding was improved, the mortality rate was reduced, and the wool yield of the sheep was improved.

The average gross shearing quality of China's improved wool is 3.1kg/, while the main wool producing country is 5.1kg/, New Zealand is only 5.1kg/, Australia is 4.3kg/, Uruguay is 3.7 ~ 4.1kg/, Chinese wool is only 61% of New Zealand and Australia is 72%, which is also the potential to increase the individual output of Chinese Sheep.

2, rationally divide the wool and meat industry, strictly prohibit sheep breed improvement and degeneration.

After the release of wool, the sheep breed improvement in wool production is deteriorated due to market orientation and poor management. This phenomenon is irreversible.

The Chinese Merino sheep is a well bred breed of fine wool and meat. It not only produces high fineness, but also has high slaughter rate and good meat quality.

If we continue to degenerate, China's fine wool industry will be destroyed.

Therefore, it is imperative to strengthen guidance and stop sheep breed improvement and degradation.

The relevant departments should establish and improve the monitoring and management system of livestock as soon as possible to prevent the unqualified sheep from entering the market and further curb the decline of fine wool sheep.

3. Vigorously develop quality fine wool production and unify wool quality standard.

In view of the fact that the textile market is developing more advanced and the domestic production structure can not meet the needs of the market, we should intensify the reform of China's fine wool production system, study and improve the fineness of wool as soon as possible, adjust the production structure of fine wool sheep, and actively develop the production of fine wool sheep.

Australian wool 90% or more is objectively detected by fineness, washing rate and grass impurity content. Moreover, more than 80% of fine wool wool is detected objectively through the length, strength and fracture location of the wool cluster. We should conscientiously learn all kinds of advanced processing and testing techniques for wool tops, and strive to improve the gross and gross hairs of the gross national hair. We should implement a unified wool cutting, unified classification, unified standard and unified sale, and establish a modern wool management system for grading, sorting, packing and testing wool, so as to stabilize the production and supply of wool.

4, establish a standardized wool circulation mechanism.

By the unified leadership of the competent departments of the state, we shall study and formulate measures for the supervision and management of wool market pactions that are suited to the characteristics of China. We should focus on the establishment of a national high starting wool market in the national wool spinning center area or the key wool producing areas. The market construction must be supported by the government and relevant departments, with emphasis on laws and policies, and the construction and development of the market can not do without the cultivation and support of the government.

Especially in the current rectification of market order, we need to strengthen management and rectification in the field of wool circulation. We should strengthen law enforcement efforts and strengthen penalties for non compliance with national standards and regulations.

At the same time, the relevant departments of the state should strengthen publicity and guidance, and give preferential policies to the wool producers or operators who first enter the normative market pactions. In order to further strengthen the construction of the wool market, we should improve and perfect the system of wool trading terms, management methods, market access conditions and so on.

5, formulate and implement the strategy of wool import and establish an information warning mechanism for wool imports.

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