Textile Enterprises Ushered In "Good Start" In February

February is usually the traditional off-season of foreign trade industry sales, but during the Spring Festival of the tiger, China's fabric foreign trade market presents a "off-season is not light" situation. What is the reason for this reversal? What opportunities and challenges will the fabric foreign trade market usher in this year?

Off season is not light

Orders keep coming

Just after the Spring Festival holiday, textile enterprises ushered in the "good start" at the same time, orders are booming.

In the production workshop of Tongyi (Quanzhou) Light Industry Co., Ltd., more than 100 dyeing machines are operating at full power to speed up production, and workers are busy at various jobs. "Now we have more than 500 tons of fabric in our hands. From the current production and operation situation, it is still optimistic." Li Zhenzhuo, general manager of the formula, said.

Jinjiang Sanfu Textile Industry Co., Ltd. has also had sufficient orders recently, and the orders have been arranged to July. The company's products are mainly sold to Europe and the United States, Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia and other countries and regions. In order to complete orders, during the Spring Festival, 60% of the company's employees choose to celebrate the new year locally, and more than 500 employees are on the job.

The ninth branch of Zhejiang Yingfeng Technology Co., Ltd. officially resumed production on the 10th day of the first month. "Years ago, we have reached an intention order with many foreign trade companies." Li Weixiong, director of the factory, said that the first cylinder of fabrics produced in the year of the tiger will be sent to Iran, Kuwait and other countries. "Today, we can produce about 500 or 600 pots of cloth, and more than 3000 pieces of grey cloth can be delivered at night. We have to work overtime recently."

"From December 2021, the company's orders began to increase. The speed of receiving orders and the number of orders are in a relatively good period in history. At present, the company has abundant orders in hand. Combined with the number of employees in place, the company's capacity has been dynamically saturated." Zhang Keming, Secretary of the board of directors of Lutai Textile Co., Ltd., said that after the overseas epidemic situation was effectively controlled in 2021, overseas market orders were effectively restored, and the company's order situation improved quarterly. The order situation of the company since the fourth quarter of 2021 is better than that of previous years, and the order situation of the first quarter of this year is also optimistic. "Now the comprehensive capacity utilization rate of the company's factories is more than 80%, but it was about 70% in the first half of last year."

Before that, many people thought that the highlight of China's textile and foreign trade enterprises had passed after Christmas last year. In addition to the factors of the new year's day and the Spring Festival holiday, the export boom in the first quarter of this year may not be sustainable. However, the current market situation has exceeded the anticipation of some industry people.

Functional fabric

Acting as the main force

In addition to the rising international competitiveness of "made in China", the deeper reason is the continuous innovation of enterprise technology. Functional fabrics play an increasingly important role in the market, showing a huge market potential.

In recent two years, Sanfu textile has been innovating and upgrading its products. It is understood that the company's independent research and development of warm winter and cool summer high conductive fabrics, elastic skin fabrics, ultra lightweight fabrics and other core products are very popular in the market. At present, the company has formed an overall layout of the industrial chain from yarn to weaving to dyeing and finishing. The upstream and downstream complement each other to provide guarantee for its orders.

Tongyi light industry attaches great importance to scientific research investment and transformation of scientific and technological achievements, and accelerates the research and development of more new fabrics. The products developed by the company include environmental friendly high-grade knitted elastic fabric, antibacterial and deodorizing functional knitted fabric, far-infrared warm knitted fabric, xylitol cold sense skin care fabric, collagen skin care fabric and other products, which are exported to Japan, Europe, the United States, Africa and other countries and regions.

At present, the domestic functional fabric market is ushering in a new round of rapid growth, more and more fabric enterprises are actively entering the Bureau.

Shaoxing jiasimin Textile Co., Ltd. specializes in all kinds of children's wear fabrics. "Affected by the epidemic situation and the multiple attacks of adult clothing enterprises and fast fashion brands, children's clothing fabric enterprises have to step up their internal training, speed up the pace of research and development of new materials and fabrics, and open up a road of differentiated development for brands, so as to seek a place for enterprise development." The relevant person in charge of the company said that the company's average design and development of 100 new varieties in the first quarter. Research and development of new fabrics will indeed increase the company's costs, including the cost of imported raw materials, production costs and professional organization testing fees, but all of these are worth it, because enterprises must take the route of innovation.

In this regard, some industry experts pointed out that China's foreign trade enterprises have overcome the difficulties of rising raw material prices, rising labor costs and sea freight last year, and have strengthened the upgrading and upgrading of their products, enhancing the scientific and technological content of their products, and making the global market more and more recognized by China's textile products.

under pressure

More motivation

Although the increase of orders and the improvement of technology have injected confidence into the industry, repeated global epidemics, economic recovery and differentiation, rising commodity prices, shortage of energy and tight shipping have also brought certain pressure to textile foreign trade enterprises. According to the report, the global economic growth rate will drop from 5.5% in 2021 to 4% in 2022 and further to 3.5% in 2023. Debt risk and credit risk are accumulating.

Liao Hongying, who has many years of working experience in textile enterprises in Ethiopia, Cambodia and other places, told reporters that in the past year, the global shipping market turbulence has affected the operation of many textile enterprises to a certain extent, and it is still unknown when the shipping cost will return to normal. She suggested that in order to balance the increasing orders and high shipping costs, enterprises should change from CIF to fob, that is, suppliers only need to pay for the land transportation of goods to domestic ports, and other expenses should be paid by overseas customers.

As for the difficulties faced by fabric enterprises in their development, Liao Hongying said frankly that at present, the exchange rate market has been rising and falling, and two-way fluctuations have become the new normal. Many orders can not lock in the long-term price, which makes it easy to have friction on the order price, leading to a dilemma for Chinese enterprises.

In addition, it is worth noting that increasing income without increasing profit has become a difficult problem in front of textile enterprises. Wan Gang, deputy general manager of Qingdao Jifa Group Co., Ltd., said that the rise in raw material prices had a greater impact on the company's production and operation activities. "Since the settlement is based on the contract price agreed in advance, the change range of the company's export unit price is small, and the rise of the company's product price in the future will be a high probability event." Wan Gang said.

In this regard, from the national level to local governments have introduced positive measures to stabilize foreign trade. Today, many places are listing the tasks and measures to stabilize foreign trade in 2022 to help enterprises stabilize orders and increase profits. Among them, seizing the dividends of the regional comprehensive economic partnership agreement (RCEP) and promoting the development of cross-border e-commerce and other business forms have become an important driving force, providing new momentum for foreign trade under pressure throughout the year.

At present, many provinces and cities are combining their own advantages and development characteristics to study targeted policy measures and action plans for RCEP. For example, Zhejiang Province, a major textile and foreign trade province, issued a three-year action plan for the implementation of RCEP (2022-2024), and put forward 21 key tasks and measures. It is clear that by 2024, the total trade volume of goods between Zhejiang Province and other RCEP countries will strive to reach 28% of the total amount of Zhejiang Province, and the implementation amount of service outsourcing undertaken by other RCEP countries will exceed 3 billion US dollars.

Looking forward to the whole year, experts in the industry pointed out that the economic operation of the textile industry still has the conditions and foundation to stabilize and improve, but the complexity and severity of the development situation can not be ignored. The textile industry should continue to consolidate the advantages of advanced manufacturing, actively grasp the opportunities of green and low-carbon transformation and "ice and snow economy". The domestic and international dual circulation will be more smooth, and the road of high-quality development of China's textile foreign trade will be wider and wider.

(source: China Textile News)

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