Oliver Haiqing Hua reports from China

According to Chinese Nonwovens & Industrial Textiles Association estimates, China completed 11.3 million tons of industrial textile fibre processing volume in 2013, showing year-on-year growth of 11.9% and accounting for a 23.3% share of total textile fibre processing.

Amongst this, nonwovens total output reached 3.84 million tons, a growth rate of 11.7% since 2012. According to data from the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, total nonwovens fabric production from the above scale enterprises reached 2,573,000 tons, growing 12.4% since 2012.

2013 China industrial textiles and nonwovens fibre processing volume (million tons)

Source: Chinese Nonwovens & Industrial Textiles Association

In 2013, industry investment has changed the stable situation during the last year, and become more active. It has completed fixed assets investments of 44.88 billion Yuan (US$ 7.21 billion), an annual growth rate of 28.7%. The numbers of construction projects, new projects and completion projects are 857, 647 and 585 respectively, with the year on year growth of 16.3%, 20.5% and 19.9% respectively.

The National Bureau of Statistics data shows, the nonwovens industry decreased at the beginning of 2013 but soon bounced back, and during the second half of the year it experienced a rapid growth.

The industry has completed an annual investment of 17.6 billion Yuan (US$ 2.83 billion), with year on year growth of 20.3%. The growth rates for the construction projects numbers, the completion projects numbers and the new projects are 7.5%, 7.1%m and 20.5% respectively. The investment in nonwovens used for sanitary materials, geotextile materials and filter materials three fields has taken up a larger proportion, and the investment value of single project has increased.

2013 industry investment source: Chinese National Bureau of Statistics

In 2013, China’s industrial textiles exports have been gradually warming up and from the zero growth in 2012, the industry has completed US$ 19.27 billion worth of various types of industrial textiles exports, a year-on-year increase of 8.4%, or three percentage points lower than the entire textile industry export growth rate.

Plastic coated fabrics, medical textiles, nonwovens, canvas textiles, bags and fiberglass  - are six categories of export products whose value accounted for nearly 80% of the entire industry exports. Among them, nonwoven fabrics export growth rate reached 21.2%, and all the other 5 categories have only achieved single digit growth.

2012 – 2013 export growth comparison source: General Administration of Customers (www.customs.gov.cn)

Table 2: 2013 China major industrial textile export source: General Administration of Customers (www.customs.gov.cn)

In 2013, Chinese industrial textiles has experienced steady economic growth. According to the National Bureau of Statistics data, the industrial added value from the 1712 scale enterprises has increased by 12.9%, which is in the leading position in the textiles industry.

The main business income and total profit have reached 238.4 billion Yuan (US$ 38.27 billion) and 134.4 billion Yuan (US$ 21.58 billion) respectively, the growth rate reached 16.5% and 16.4% respectively, essentially flat in comparison with the previous year.

The industry profit rate reached 5.64%, up 0.1 percentage points over the previous year. 9.6% of the industry has faced losses, down 0.3 percentage points over the previous year. The textile belts and construction fabrics industry faced heavy losses with the year-on-year growth in losses reaching 467.2%, so that the overall industry loss has also experienced a substantial increase of 117.1%.

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About Oliver Haiqing Hua

Oliver Haiqing Hua, a textiles business analyst, has joined the Innovation in Textiles team to provide regular insider reports on developments within the Chinese textile industry. Oliver focuses on the development and changes in the Chinese textiles industry and associated industries, and gives in-depth analysis and interpretation of the relevant policies, industry trends, and business events.

Mr. Hua previously worked for the former Ministry of Equipment & Materials and the former Ministry of Internal Trade of China from 1984 to 1997. His role included reporting on the market, raw materials, production, logistics, finance, management dynamics, as well as the analysis related to all the upstream and downstream aspects in the industry supply chain.