In the first half of this year, China’s industrial textile industry has been running smoothly, with sustainable growth of production, sales and export, as well as basically stable profitability.

Steady development of the industry

In the first half of 2017, main business income of enterprises above designated size amounted to 156.645 billion yuan, an increase of 7.55%, while total profit reached 8.753 billion yuan, down by 0.79%, and the average profit margin of the industry was 5.59%.

The total profit of the industry was in decline in the first half of this year, mainly due to textile belt and cord fabrics. The main business income of textile belt and cord fabrics reached 29.251 billion yuan, up by 4.31% year on year, and main business cost increased by 6.40%, while total profit was 1.269 billion yuan, a whopping decrease of 32.93% over the same period of last year. The profit of textile belt and cord fabrics significantly reduced, which was caused by sharp fluctuations in raw material prices on the one hand, and on the other hand by data anomalies of some enterprises.

The decline in non-woven fabric profit growth is also part of the reason for the decline in profit margins. In the first half of the year, main business income and total profit of nonwovens enterprises above scale reached 76.365 billion yuan and 4.377 billion yuan, an increase of 6.30% and 2.32% respectively, while profit growth rate in 2016 was 8.23%. The declined of profit growth was caused by fierce competition in the industry and fluctuation in raw material price together.

For rope and cable enterprises, main business income and total profit amounted to 15.49 billion yuan and 1.01 billion yuan, respectively, up by 8.25% and 4.28%; for canvas enterprises, main business income and total profit increased by 11.89% and 28.82%; while for other industrial textile enterprises, up by 13.69% and 21.86% respectively, with excellent performance.

According to the trace analysis of 150 key enterprises by China Nonwovens & Industrial Textile Association (CNITA), these enterprises operated a lot better, whose main business income and total profit respectively increased by 10.91% and 17.05%, and profit margin was 9.25%. while the growth rate of the above two indicators for nonwovens enterprises was 11.83% and 9.3%, but the profit margin was 6.82%, down by 0.2 percentage point, indicating that the fluctuation of fiber price (such as viscose) caused a greater impact on the downstream business.

Rapid growth in investment

The investment of enterprises above scale amounted to 36.043 billion yuan, an increase of 18.14%. For divisions of the industry, nonwovens was still the hot spot for investment, whose actual completed investment reached 17.470 billion yuan, an increase of 32.12%. The investment in nonwovens showed a strong periodicity, during which the investment was into rising range in 2016, and it was expected that it would maintain high growth to drive the investment growth of the industry through the year of 2017. The rapid growth of nonwovens investment indicated that enterprises were very optimistic about the future development of the industry, and also active expansion and upgrading in production capacity promoted the industrial upgrading of nonwovens industry. While it also increased the industry competition in a short time, especially for the low-end homogeneity competition, pulling down the level of average price. 

The investment growth in rope and cable industry increased by 18.92%, with a slowdown in growth compared with the beginning of the year; the investment in canopy and canvas has maintained a double-digit growth of 10.07%; while the investment in textile belt and cord fabric has decreased by 17.06.  

The international market picked up

The exports of the industrial textile industry amounted to 11.990 billion yuan in the first half of 2017, a year-on-year increase of 2.49%, reversing the decline in exports in 2016; the imports reached 3.442 billion yuan, up by 10.6%

For the product category, exports of major products have maintained varying degrees of growth. The industrial coated fabric, medical and sanitary textiles, canvas and tarp textiles, rope and cable, as well as leather belt grew by 8.62%, 1.25%, 2.42%, 2.7% and 0.46% respectively in exports, while exports of nonwovens decreased by 2.24%, because its price declined by 7.95%. For the driving factors of export, export volume was still the main factor to promote export growth. In the above six categories of products, export prices of industrial coated fabric and canvas and tarp textiles increased by 1.93% and 3.73% respectively, while the rest were all in decline.

For market, exports to the United States and the European Union market significantly improved, with value of 1.925 billion dollars and 2.074 billion dollars respectively, an increase of 6.69% and 4.98%; while exports to Japan and Vietnam decreased by 9.68% and 5.65 respectively, causing a slight decrease by 0.48% to Asian market.

Forecast for the full-year

In the second half of 2017, the national and global macroeconomic environment will remain stable, and show a warmer trend. Due to tighter environmental policy and gradual stabilization of raw material, prices of main products in the industry will adjust in different ranges, which partly resolves cost pressure. Enterprises in the industry maintain a high level of confidence in the development of the year, and the industry is expected to continue the steady development trend as the first half of the year, meanwhile, the level of quality and efficiency will be improved to a great extent.