2022 IFTF Textile Machinery Seminar Held, Advocating to Promote Global Industry

At 18:30 Beijing time on July 14, 2022 IFTF Textile Machinery Seminar was held in online + live mode. Sun Rui Zhe, President of the International Textile Federation and President of the China Textile Federation (hereinafter: CFTF), attended the meeting and delivered a speech. Xu Yingxin and Yang Zhaohua, Vice Presidents of CFTU, Yuan Hongping, Deputy Secretary General and Director of Foreign Affairs Office of CFTU, Yan Yan, Director of Social Responsibility Office of CFTU, Liu Yaozhong, Deputy Director of International Trade Office of CFTU and representatives of CFTU Foreign Affairs Office, China Textile Machinery Association and other departments and member units participated in the meeting online at the CFTU venue.

 

As a traditional industry meeting of the International Textile Federation, the International Textile Federation Textile Machinery Symposium is held annually by the Swiss, German and Italian Textile Machinery Associations in Zurich, Frankfurt and Milan on a rotating basis. In this meeting, members and former chairmen of the decision making committee of IFTF, representatives of IFTF management committee members, and representatives of multinational textile and spinning machine enterprises attended the meeting and had an in-depth exchange of information on the current situation and development ideas of the textile and spinning machine industry in each country (region). The meeting was chaired by Christian Schindler, Director General of IFTF.

 

In the opening speech of the conference, Sun Rizhe communicated on the development status and innovative practices of the Chinese textile industry. He pointed out that at present, the world's century-old changes and the epidemic of the century are intertwined, and the development of the textile industry is facing more risks and challenges. As an important platform to promote global textile industry cooperation, the International Textile Federation insists on promoting the consensus of the textile industry, safeguarding the interests of the textile industry and playing an important role in promoting the stable, safe and healthy development of the global textile industry. The main manifestations are.

 

First, the International Textile Federation puts development at the center of the industry's agenda. International Textile Federation upholds the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, according to the characteristics of the industry, the stage of development, and actively promote the industry's innovation and cooperation, steady recovery and sustainable development. Continuously improve the effectiveness, fairness, balance and coordination of the development of the global textile industry. Second, the International Textile Federation to promote innovation as the key task of industry development. It insists on being innovation-driven and strengthens the construction of platforms, think tanks and standards. Through cooperation with universities, scientific institutions, research institutes or industrial clusters, it plans to establish global R&D platforms around the world, such as IFTF global R&D centers, global innovation centers or global industrial demonstration bases. By conducting pilot projects, it will promote the transformation of cutting-edge technologies into advanced productivity in the industry. Third, IFTF takes strengthening cooperation as the key landing point for industry services. Open cooperation is an important way to enhance the operational efficiency and stability and security of the global industry chain supply chain. The International Textile Federation is committed to building a cooperative relationship of mutual respect, fairness and justice, win-win cooperation, safety and security. It upholds the multilateral trading system, promotes the elimination of trade, investment and technical barriers, promotes the free flow of resource elements in the global textile industry, and builds synergy for sustainable development. The International Textile Federation actively promotes pragmatic cooperation and balanced development of the industrial chain and supply chain.

 

Sun Ruizhe pointed out that China's textile industry is an important part of the global textile supply chain and plays an important role in meeting people's demand for a better life and ensuring the stable and healthy development of the world textile industry. Since this year, in the face of the complex and severe international situation and the real impact of the domestic epidemic, the Chinese textile industry under pressure to move forward.

 

Sun Rui Zhe introduced, 2022 January to May, the textile industry industrial value added of enterprises above the size of 1.5% year-on-year growth, a slowdown of 10 percentage points over the same period last year; textile industry enterprises above the size of the business income achieved year-on-year growth of 7.1%; to achieve a 19.5% year-on-year reduction in profits. National retail sales of clothing, shoes and hats, needles and textiles above the quota decreased by 8.1% year-on-year, and the national online retail sales of wearing goods decreased by 1.6% year-on-year.

 

Sun Rizhe pointed out that the Chinese textile and apparel industry has carried out fruitful and innovative practices while achieving a stable recovery. The industry has made great progress in innovation development, digital development, green development, intensive development, open development, etc.

 

Sun Rizhe stressed that at present, the world has entered a new period of turbulent change, and only by integrating into the tide of globalization, openness and cooperation can bring a broader space and a more prosperous future to the industry.

 

Sun Rizhe pointed out that, for the future, the industry should jointly promote inclusive and inclusive development; jointly promote digital and green transformation; and jointly enhance the sense of industrial security and access. China's development cannot be separated from the world, and the world's development needs China. In the second half of the year, China will hold the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Under the logic of common prosperity and the new development pattern of double cycle, "China's development, world opportunities" will be interpreted and interpreted in the field of textile and garment.


During the meeting, Anees Khawaja, CEO of Pakistan Mohammad Group, said that Pakistan has some problems in politics, economy and industry. There is a constant change of government and recent textile projects have been postponed for various reasons. Accordingly, there are some policy changes in the garment industry and the textile industry. Currently, 60-70% of the country's revenue comes from textile exports, with home textiles being the most popular sector. He hopes that Pakistan's textile industry can strengthen its competitiveness and related textile projects can go to restore the impact. He stressed that Pakistan is currently suffering from a severe economic recession. For the future, Pakistan's textile industry will focus on sustainable development, and he believes that Pakistan will turn the tide against the wind in the near future and is expected to see a 25% growth this year. In addition, he also expressed hope that the local balance sheet has improved, and increased investment opportunities.

Mr. Fernando Pimentel, representative of the Brazilian Textile and Apparel Association, presented the current economic situation in Brazil. By comparing the data of the textile and apparel industry in terms of production, sales, import and export, and employment so far in 2019, the current development of the textile and apparel industry in Brazil was analyzed. Brazil's textile and apparel value chain shows positive growth from 2021. Investments in machinery and equipment have grown by about $2 billion this year. Currently, the Brazilian textile and apparel industry is paying more attention to the domestic market, with production remaining stable overall and sales growing, and the future to reduce the consumption of raw materials and the use of new raw materials. In terms of exports, focusing on southern Latin America and the United States; in terms of imports, the main focus on countries from Asia, especially China. He expected that this year, Brazil's textile and apparel imports of about 5 billion U.S. dollars, exports of about 1-1.5 billion U.S. dollars. Talking about the coming year, he said that the market in Brazil is full of uncertainties due to factors such as the increase of inflation in the United States, the increase of the interest rate of the U.S. dollar and the presidential election in Brazil.

 

The meeting, representatives of textile machinery enterprises from a number of countries also around their own equipment in the field of market feelings to share information.

 

Mr.Sanjay Jayavarthanavelu, the representative of spinning machinery company India Longview, said in the exchange that the market demand for spinning equipment has always been very strong since 2021, and in his opinion, it will remain so in the next few years. However, the industry also faces a number of challenges, including inflation, rising raw material prices, supply chain problems, shortages of electronic products, logistics problems and so on, and not all problems have solutions. He said the company has not yet had any order cancellations, and the momentum is stronger. From the customer situation, the performance is also relatively stable, and customer companies are further promoting equipment renewal. Longview is now and will continue to focus on sustainability, digitalization and automation in the future.

 

Mr. Georg Stausberg, representative of Oerlikon, a chemical fiber machinery company, introduced that Oerlikon's main business is in chemical fiber machinery. At present, orders are good in textile machinery, and in spinning yarn, due to the situation in Ukraine and rising oil prices, customers' profits are affected and inventories are relatively high. Although there is no order cancellation yet, but there will be order delay phenomenon. Customers are becoming more cautious in their investments, especially in spinning machinery. On the woven side, woven capacity has increased over the past few years, and capacity is also increasing on the spinning machinery side. All of the company's customers are integrated customers. The overall situation is good, with some big players expanding their business with a view to extending the value chain, while some smaller players are being established in Central America and Turkey. Currently, the market is improving compared to previous years, but it is still difficult to maintain high growth rates. From last year more heard about sustainability, energy saving, automation, but users also differ in their choice of equipment, some companies still choose manual equipment, because the automation equipment for the quality of the relevant personnel also requires higher.

 

Mr. Kurt Lamkowski, the head of the woven machinery company representative BJL, said that in 2021, we have a very strong market rebound, as do other machinery categories. Mainly several factors, first of all, the new crown epidemic to some extent to get some control, the industry investment has improved; at the same time, we also note that some medium-sized enterprises, but also after the epidemic to get further development, these factors are directly led to the woven enterprises in the past few years time investment growth. In the past year, from the perspective of woven machinery, we also had supply chain issues, such as shortages, where our production capacity could not meet the rapid increase in market demand, which also led to longer delivery times.

Most manufacturers are now performing well in terms of orders, and there is a backlog of orders. If we make a forecast for 2022, I think it should be very strong from a volume point of view, similar to 2021. Of course, in general, it depends on the orders, and the accumulation of orders this year.

 

Regina, the printing and dyeing machinery representative, said that in dyeing and finishing, it is important for manufacturers to focus on customer needs, that is, to focus on reducing CO2 emissions, reducing water and energy consumption, improving automation and so on.

 

In the past year, our growth has been good overall and, in the first few months of the year, positive growth was also achieved. Of course, there is still a lot of uncertainty, and we are seeing some slowing trends. For example, there is a lot of uncertainty in Europe regarding natural gas and other sources of energy.

 

The current market trend is that our customers want to get rid of the old machinery, they need more high-tech, automated and more environmentally friendly machinery. However, the financing aspect was also mentioned earlier, which is more difficult for our customers.

 

China Textile Machinery Association Secretary General Cong Zheng around the overall situation of China's textile machinery industry since 2021 and the main spinning machine product sales to communicate. 2021 China's textile machinery industry to achieve operating income of more than 90 billion yuan. 2022 in the first quarter to continue the growth trend, from April the industry into negative growth.

 

According to the report, in 2021 China's textile machinery exports 4.8 billion U.S. dollars, imports 3.6 billion U.S. dollars. From January to May 2022, China's textile machinery exports were US$2.0 billion, up 4.8% year-on-year; imports were US$1.5 billion, down 9.1% year-on-year. Since 2021 China's main import countries of textile machinery are Japan (33%), Germany (31%), Italy (9%); the main export countries are India (19%), Vietnam (10%), Turkey (7%).

 

Talking about the sales of major textile machinery products, he said that in 2021, spinning machinery to return to the pre-epidemic level, chemical fiber machinery to record high; 2022 quarter of the main machinery year-on-year are to achieve greater growth. Weaving machinery and knitting machinery in 2021 have hit a new high in recent years. 2022 quarter of the main machinery year-on-year stability, rapier loom and water jet loom appeared a large drop.

 

Cong Zheng said, currently facing the risk of global inflation and China's domestic consumer market recovery rate of two uncertain factors, the spinning machine industry is continuing to recover, still need more confidence and patience. The future spinning machine industry to firmly to automation, intelligent, green energy-saving direction.

 

At the meeting, Maurer Ernesto, chairman of the European Textile Machinery Association, shared the situation of the two recent spinning machine exhibitions held in Turkey and Germany. He said that the "ITM ISTANBUL 2022" exhibition held in Istanbul, Turkey is not too many exhibitors and visitors, but the quality is higher, which is exactly what we want, because the purpose of the exhibition is to conduct high-quality exchanges and discussions. In fact, many spinning companies participated in the exhibition and received good orders, although the delivery time was extended due to supply chain and raw material problems. What was surprising was that people from all over the world are aware of the problems we are facing now, but everyone is trying to respond positively. The show in Frankfurt, Germany, was impressive, with more exhibitors and visitors than expected. He said the epidemic has made us more aware of what the purpose of holding a show or visiting a show is to maximize value so that the show is meaningful.

 

Christine Schindler, Director General of ITMSS, gave a brief analysis of the 2021 ITMSS Textile Machinery Shipment Statistics Report (ITMSS 2021) at the conference. He took the chemical staple fiber equipment situation as an example for the global market trend analysis. According to the report, shipments of staple fiber spindles in 2021 grew 110% year-on-year, showing a cyclical performance, of which China accounted for 51% and 90% overall into Asia. Among the top 10 investing countries globally, China is in first place, followed by India, Pakistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Malaysia, Mexico and Egypt. Other sub-sectors will vary in terms of shipments, but the overall trend is similar to an increase in shipments in 2021.

He also shared the research conducted by the International Textile Federation in the last week. From the research pooled by different sub-sectors, the order situation is generally good, with a decline in the first half of 2022 compared to the same period last year. The second half of the year orders are also expected to be lower compared to the same period last year. In view of the situation in 2021 and the impact the industry is facing including supply chain issues, the situation in Ukraine and energy prices, orders are down in most regions and up in a few. Talking about spinning machine trends, he said that with the increase in water consumption, labor and other costs, industry investment will focus more on sustainable production, so the demand for higher flexibility and small batch production equipment will be reflected.

 

In his concluding remarks, Sun Ruizhe, president of the International Textile Federation and president of the China Textile Federation, said that we are now dealing with a variety of unprecedented issues and challenges. ITMF has members all over the world, and we hope that every colleague attending the conference will feel that they have the support of the ITMF and everyone else.