Since August, the editor has visited 4 finishing companies twice a week, including 2 coating factories and 2 printing factories. But for more than a month, the two printing factories have been producing normally every day, and the two coating factories have basically been shut down.
After understanding, the reason why the two coating factories have been shut down and stopped is because there are no orders. As we all know, most of the local coating factories are processing companies. Like dyeing factories, they are mostly sent to the factory by fabric traders and processed and produced according to their requirements. Therefore, orders from coating factories basically depend on orders from traders.
Affected by the epidemic, finishing plants have insufficient orders
Since March this year, due to the impact of the epidemic, transportation has been affected, and freight has not been shipped frequently. At the same time, it has also blocked customer exchanges, causing textile companies to miss the peak season in the first half of the year. And until now, the industry has not fully returned to its pre-pandemic state. The market in August is weaker than in previous years. Fabric traders have no orders. How can coating factories have orders?
Recently, with the arrival of the “Golden Nine”, the market conditions have loosened, and some gray fabrics and fabrics have begun to be shipped out. Manufacturers have taken this opportunity to remove a small wave of inventory. Some dyeing factories are also rumored to have increased the number of warehouses and lengthened delivery times. But overall, there are only a few companies that have improved, and most companies are still missing orders. Especially for finishing plants such as coatings, the shortage of orders is still obvious.
In the era of epidemic, the demand for epidemic prevention supplies is stable
The two printing factories can still produce normally during the off-season, mainly due to orders such as non-woven printing. Since the epidemic, the mask business has been in full swing. In the past few years, mask factories and non-woven fabric factories have made a lot of money. Later, as the epidemic normalized, the prices of anti-epidemic products returned to normal, and their volumes continued to expand, so the supply was normal. The normalization of the epidemic has also made the demand for anti-epidemic products very stable, and companies in the industry are currently able to get a piece of this “big cake” to some extent.
The owner of a printing factory with four printing machines said: “Actually, our overall operating situation is not very good. Now we mainly rely on non-woven printing. There are really few printing orders for clothing, so the overall situation is still relatively difficult.”
Clothing demand shrinks, businesses are having a hard time
It can be seen that the demand for clothing has still not expanded. Since the “carnival” of demand in 2017, there has been no sign of recovery in demand. In addition, under the influence of the epidemic, life for offline clothing stores has become increasingly difficult. Especially some big clothing brands have astonishing amounts of clothing inventory. In 2019, due to the “warm winter”, winter clothing sales were sluggish and there was a serious backlog of clothing. There are few products related to winter clothing fabrics that are not having an easy time. Nylon, imitation memory, polyester taffeta, etc., the prices of these fabrics have almost all dropped by about 30% year-on-year, and there has been a phenomenon of low-price sales through various channels. Not only fabrics, but also other industries in the entire industry chain, such as calendering, coating, printing and dyeing, etc., have experienced more or less reduced orders.
Not all clothing fabrics require post-finishing processing. Some fabrics only need simple dyeing, washing, and calendering, and post-finishing such as stamping and hot stamping are not involved in all clothing orders. Therefore, the “cake” in the hands of printing factories, coating factories, and composite factories has become smaller again, and naturally fewer companies can get a share.
But the good news is that many autumn and winter fabrics are inseparable from post-finishing processing, and now is the time when autumn and winter fabrics are being released in large quantities. Moreover, some experts predict that this year will be a “cold winter” and it will arrive early. Therefore, as the peak season deepens, subsequent orders for winter clothing fabrics may have an upward trend, and finishing factories such as coating and printing will gradually become busy.
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