{"id":133134,"date":"2023-10-13T07:02:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-13T05:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=133134"},"modified":"2023-10-10T11:56:19","modified_gmt":"2023-10-10T09:56:19","slug":"from-red-in-2022-to-dark-red-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/from-red-in-2022-to-dark-red-this-year\/","title":{"rendered":"From red in 2022 to dark red this year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

In the World Economic Outlook of the International Textile Manufacturers Federation (ITMF), Zurich\/Switzerland, in January the world economy was expected to grow at more than 4%, but revised its projection by 1 percentage point 1 year later.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Staple
Stable fiber market share 2022 vs. 1972 \u00a9<\/strong> The Fiber Year<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The beginning of the year for the world textile industry was quite strong. The performance gradually lessened to end the year in a terrible condition. Manufacturing in the 2nd<\/sup> half suffered from sharp losses. Consumption heavily contracted due to uncertainty, worsened consumer sentiment and lower disposable incomes, investments declined, and machinery orders were postponed or canceled. Textile and apparel exports from major industries began their descent in the middle of the year. Retail and manufacturers\u2019 inventories continued to rise most of the year with US manufacturers\u2019 Inventory-to-Shipment apparel ratio climbing to a century high in August.
Most of the adverse conditions continued into 2023. The world supply went into the red in 2022 after 5 years of uninterrupted growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cultivation of natural fibers<\/strong> rose by more than 4%, marking its fastest expansion in 4 years. Reason for this development contrary to the market is their inability to immediately respond to changes in demand other than man-made staple fibers. All subsegments contributed to the positive development with large-scale cotton jumping nearly 5% following expanded cotton area and improved yields. Modest expansion of wool supply was supported by an improving price competitiveness against major competing fibers. However, pressure remained due to modestly increasing flock numbers but constantly increasing sheep meat production and demand. The segment of bast fibers also grew by virtually 2% pushed by flax and hemp production while large-scale jute was projected up 1%. Other natural fibers were essentially driven by silk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Man-made fibers<\/strong>, that are used to success, suffered from their 3rd decrease in 40 years after declaration of pandemic in 2020 and 2008 during the Global Financial Crisis when recording its fastest drop at more than 5%. Both categories of synthetic and cellulosic fibers witnessed a similar reduction of supply by 2%.
Mainstream synthetic fibers comprising polyester, polyamide, polypropylene and acrylics lowered their production between 1-6% as direct response to initially sluggish and later plummeting demand across the board in apparel, home textile and industrial end-uses. The small-scale sector of aramid, carbon and elastane fibers was virtually stable with different performance by type. Aramid witnessed high demand in optical fiber cables, an improvement in automotive applications, an uptick in protective clothing sectors but a softness in personal electronics. Carbon fiber demand benefited from a faster than expected recovery in the aviation industry and ongoing growth in the wind industry with dynamics projected to accelerate globally due to commitments to net zero and growing energy security concerns. The elastane market structure is completely different with 3\/4 of capacity located in PR China. Elastane by far did not reach the growth rates of the both sophisticated fibers exceeding 7% each but fell after 10-year expansion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cellulosic \ufb01bers<\/strong>, the eldest man-made fiber derived from essentially wood, witnessed a mixed performance. The production volume of standard viscose fibers diminished and further investments to convert from standard to specialty fibers will see an ongoing lowering. Modal fibers base on a comparable process with modifications in spinning solution and spinning process to yield high strength fibers for new applications thanks to the production of very fine yarns. They also experienced a downswing but current investments from leading producers are expected to stimulate a rebound soon. Lyocell was again the best performing fiber sector with double-digit expansion and the successful start-up of the world\u2019s largest plant in Thailand early 2022. Several investments to enlarge capacity justify an optimistic outlook even if some projects were postponed due to pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The market assessment from a technology point of view<\/strong>, decisive for subsequent processing, comes to the conclusion that the entire staple fiber segment succeeded to increase, while filaments declined and spunlaids unsurprisingly softened.
The staple fiber sector<\/strong> has been dominated by natural fibers, which explains steady variations over time. Crop rotation, competition in cultivable acreage with food crops and biofuels, crop failure due to climatic conditions like drought or flooding, pest infestation and higher prices are main reasons for the uneven long-term trend. In addition, natural fibers have been largely replaced by man-made fibers unless their unique properties allow the successful service of market niches. Last year\u2019s growth compensated shortfalls in both synthetic and cellulosic fibers. In consequence, market forces shifted in favor of natural fibers to hold a 53% share while synthetics accounted for 35% and cellulosics remained at 12%.
The 3 largest staple fiber cultivating and producing nations were PR China, India and the USA with a cumulative share of 62% but a different development last year. Chinese output declined in both categories while India recorded 7% expansion in man-made fibers and natural fiber output in the USA surged 20%. Filaments experienced their first decline in 14 years. Adjustments in spinning rates with globally lower volume have been principally seen during worldwide crises such as both oil crises in the 1970s and the Global Financial Crisis (see main picture, above). A moderate 1% decline in synthetic filaments production was confronted with the second consecutive sharp expansion in small-scale cellulosic filaments.
Industry leaders are the same as in the staple fiber business. Chinese industry reported its first decrease in the century by 2% but succeeded to cushion this cutback by a successful export business to grow 9% to an all-time high. The 3% growth in India predominantly arose from gains in the polyester textile yarn business and significant drops in trade volumes either way lifted domestic consumption considerably. Losses in the US polyamide, polyester and polypropylene business accumulated to around 10%.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Top
Top 10 textile and apparel exporters. \u00a9<\/strong> The Fiber Year<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Spunlaid nonwovens<\/strong>\u00a0also diminished manufacturing to see its second straight decrease after the PPE-induced 33% boost in 2020. Manufacturing activity in PR China softened 4% while both India and the USA nearly reached their previous year\u2019s levels. In a nutshell, the global fiber industry has lost a cumulative volume of about 20 million tons during the 3-year pandemic and even if the WHO declared an end to pandemic in May 2023 there is no end in sight for ongoing reductions.
It was no surprise to see expanding export values for the vast majority of major industries, given elevated inflation across the globe. A surprise, however, was to identify Myanmar as the fastest growing export nation by +55%. Sourcing was strongly reduced after the military coup on February 1, 2021, but fashion brands and retailers apparently shifted back orders to Myanmar for price reasons although the population faced unprecedented humanitarian and political crisis.
The top 10 textile and apparel exporters (see above) managed to lift their cumulative shipments by 5 % to US$634 billion. Below-average growth rates were visible in PR China, extra-EU exports and Turkey. The only decline at 7% occurred in India as a consequence of a steep 30% drop in shipments of the cotton chapter while apparel exports continued their recovery. Both knitwear and woven apparel articles hit a 5-year high after expanding 5% and 16%, respectively. The remaining industries saw accelerated growth with double-digit rates in Cambodia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Vietnam.
To tell the whole story, it is essential to know that dynamics for most of the shown countries turned negative in the 3rd<\/sup>\u00a0quarter (Q3) already and the downward tendency mostly continued through the 1st<\/sup>\u00a0half (H1) of 2023. The performance in H1\/2023 for the aforementioned nations is summarized below.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"January-June
January-June 2023: Textile and apparel export performance. \u00a9<\/strong> The Fiber Year<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Outlook<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The notion is that losses seen so far will certainly not be settled in H2\/2023. On the contrary, major consuming areas such as European Union (EU), Japan and the USA continue to import less. Weak domestic demand, housing crisis and record-high youth unemployment in China mainland also cannot be compensated. Figures for H1\/2023 reveal 3% decline into Japan, 12% reduction into EU, 20% drop into PR China and 23% contraction the USA with a cumulative shortfall of $28 billion.
There are voices in the industry that place their hopes in the new program typically starting in Q3 for the 2024 spring season for the long-awaited improvement in utilization rates. Other voices assume a strong rebound when the war in Ukraine has come to an end. Let\u2019s further assume major geopolitical tensions would also be over by tomorrow. Will we then see consumer spending to surge and a strong rebound in demand like it was visible many times in the past after a slump in demand?
Elevated inflation, shortage of workers, high inventory levels and consumers cutting spending on non-essentials in favor of traveling, services and entertainment are expected to prevent a recovery for the time being.
Projections of reduced cotton production and use in the current season and early 2023 data on man-made fiber production in major markets, depressed sentiment along the textile value chain and terrible trade data rather come to the conclusion that the worst is yet to come.
We need to be prepared to weather upcoming challenges from worsening utilization rates and ongoing margin pressure and a red-hot survey on the textile environment may prove to be instrumental in conducting business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the World Economic Outlook of the International Textile Manufacturers Federation (ITMF), Zurich\/Switzerland, in January the world economy was expected to grow at more than 4%, but revised its projection by 1 percentage point 1 year later. The beginning of the year for the world textile industry was quite strong. The performance gradually lessened to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"2022 was an extraordinary year, full of turbulences with the newly emerging Covid Omicron variant, the war in Ukraine and increasing geopolitical tensions, inflation, and the energy and food supply crises","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[22867,13793,11323,20445],"supplier":[16535],"class_list":["post-133134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-cellulosicfibers","tag-fibres","tag-naturalfibers","tag-syntheticfibers","supplier-international-textile-manufacturers-federation-itmf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133134"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=133134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}