China’s textiles exports dropped from the beginning of the third quarter of this year and is expected to decline further this month as the demand from countries such as Vietnam, India and Honduras has significantly declined due to rising logistics costs and container shortage. The waiting period for a container has increased from a week to a month.
Shipping cost has also increased by 3 to 5 times compared to the cost before the pandemic. High shipping costs have, in turn, caused prices to rise, making customers reluctant to buy Chinese textiles. Thus, buyers are looking for lower prices and new textile suppliers.
Additionally, most people in Europe, North America and Japan are now vaccinated and the orders for PPE from these countries have also reduced.
However, the orders are expected to increase again from October 2021 due to high demand for fabrics and warm textiles for winter.
Chinese textile exports were $7.30 billion in January 2021, which dropped by 27.68 per cent to reach $5.28 billion in March 2021 and recovered again in Q2 2021 to reach $7.37 billion in June 2021, according to Fibre2Fashion’s market analysis tool TexPro.
By the end of Q3 2021, the exports may decrease to $6.05 billion with a drop of 18 per cent over the exports in June 2021 due to high logistics issues. They are likely to move up again in December 2021 to $6.80 billion due to high demand for textiles in the winter season.