The Fiber Production Volume in The World Textile Industry in 2013 Rose by 2.8%

A recently published report titled ‘The Fiber Year 2014’, the world survey report on textiles & nonwovens, states that the fiber production volume in the world textile industry in 2013 rose by 2.8% to 92.3 million tonnes. This includes increases in manmade fiber segments while natural fibers were down by 3.0% to 32.0 million tonnes. Manmade fibers went up by 6.1% to 60.3 million tonnes.

As a matter of common knowledge natural fibers production is not precisely projectable due to climatic and other natural imponderabilities. Hence, annual cotton production is quite often in no accordance with consumption. It needs to be adjusted while basically manmade fiber stocks are controlled to match demand. As global cotton stocks have been traced by international organizations like ICAC, consumption figures for cotton are included in a world-fiber-use figure. This data delivers a more accurate indication for further processing volumes.

World Fiber Use
Referring to this approach, last year's use of fibers amounted to 90.1 million tonnes, up by 4.4%. This sizeable acceleration in growth compared with a rise of 1.5% in 2011 was realized despite persistent economic uncertainties and even negative growth in the European Union.

The market size of 90.1 million tonnes corresponds with an average per capita consumption of 12.7 kg. Last year‘s growth rate of 4.4% succeeded to outperform the long-term growth rate of 2.8% since 1970 and the shortterm average annual growth of 3.5% since the year 2000. The recent acceleration of fiber demand reflects the impact of rapidly rising disposable incomes in populous nations like the BRIC-countries.

Trading Activities
Most of the leading textile and clothing exporters managed to lift their shipments. The joint export value of the ten largest exporting nations including EU(28) extra trade rose 8.1% to USD527 billion. The Chinese industry further advanced by lifting its export value 11.4% to USD284, while Turkey and Bangladesh also witnessed pleasant export growth.

Vietnam, however, reported the strongest growth amounting to more than 18% approaching USD20 billion. This seems to be a foretaste of future duty-free access to the U.S. market after the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement has been put into effect.

An update on negotiations is being provided by the United States Fashion Industry Association (USFIA). The import value into the United States and EU(28) rose 4.1% to USD225 billion. Although the both managed to grow their exports at a higher rate, joint trade deficit further worsened to USD146 billion.