Business

China Printed & Dyed Fabric Export Analysis

Apparel exporters around the world are heavily dependent on China for its supply of a variety of fabrics. Here is a short analysis of China's printed and dyed fabric exports.

As a traditional pillar industry in China, printing and dyeing industry is in the forefront in terms of its development, scale and capacity. With the transformation of China's printing and dyeing industry and fiercer competition in international market, the exports of China's printed and dyed fabric have slowed down somewhat.

Printed and dyed fabric export value which had been constantly increasing during 2009 and 2014, started to fall in 2014 and moved lower over the last two years. In 2016, China's printed and dyed fabric export volumes totaled 6.413 billion metres, up 2% year on year and export value reached US$ 10.072 billion, down 6% year on year.

Export structure

According to raw materials, printed and dyed fabric is divided into cotton printed and dyed fabric and cotton blended printed and dyed fabric. In 2009-2016, the export structure is stated below.

Among the export volumes of printed and dyed fabric, the proportion of cotton fabric was much larger than that of cotton blended fabric. However, the proportion of cotton fabric has been falling in recent years. In 2016, the proportion of cotton printed and dyed fabric approached 77%, down 3% from 2015, while the exports of cotton blended printed & dyed fabric increased year by year. According to printing & dyeing process, the printed and dyed fabric is divided into dyed fabric, yarn-dyed fabric and printed fabric.

In 2016, among the cotton printed and dyed fabric, printed fabric took the largest share of 35%, while among the cotton blended printed and dyed fabric, yarn-dyed fabric exports accounted for the most, with a share of 61%. Export value of printed and dyed fabric exports have fallen in the last two years, indicating a difficult export market. In 2016, export volumes increased, but export value decreased, showing that export growth is extensive and competition is mainly from low prices and volume increase. Second, with the development of textile industry in Southeast Asia and soaring increase of feedstock and labour costs in China, printed and dyed fabric export market is impacted negatively. Third, with the regulation on the environmental protection, many small dyeing plants are eliminated, which means that the surviving plants must be green and very efficient, to promote printing and dyeing industry to transform from low-end to high-end, to further improve product value.