|
Japan is the leading country of importing and exporting textile products. As the cotton in Japan completely depends on importation, except the war times, it is the biggest and most stable net-import country of cotton. During the 1970s and 1980s, Japan’s cotton importation stayed around 700-800 thousand ton, which occupied 15-20% of the world cotton sales volume. Since 1990s, the cotton importation had been gradually reduced in Japan. Besides, Japan is also a major consumption country of the wool. Its wool importation takes 15% of the world overall demand. It is the second largest wool importation country all over the world. The raw silk demand of Japan is approximately one-third of the world’s total demand, while its own production can only meet 1/3-2/5 of its total needs; so Japan need to greatly import the raw silk and silk.
Affected by the Earthquake, the short-term demand of the textile material including cotton, raw silk and wool will have some reduction. Meanwhile, it is helpful to ease the big pressure caused by the increasing cost of the material production in China. Because the cotton price in China is keeping adjusting at a high level recently, the cost pressure upon the spinning factories and the clothes manufacturers is great. The price reduction of the basic material like cotton may help to relieve the price inversion situation in the present cotton spinning market. Take the cotton and yarn for example. The present cotton exworks is 33,000 Yuan/ton in Xinji, He Bei province, China. The full cotton yarn quotation is hard to reduce in the downstream market. According to the recorded prices, the differentiated price between the combed 32s cotton yarn and the cotton price was among 5,000 Yuan/ton-6,000 Yuan/ton during the tiny profitable period of the cotton manufacturers. However, in this run of increase of the cotton price, it rose to the 7,000-10,000 Yuan/ton, which brought considerable profit to the manufacturers. Moreover, the international cotton price is also adjusting at a high level; the manufacturers definitely wouldn’t reduce the price. Whereas, with the transformation of the domestic economy situation, and the factors including labor shortage, electricity limitation, industry transition, labor cost and appreciation of RMB are all nibbling the profit of the cotton yarn manufacturers; the cotton price in the cotton yarn market is forced to enter a stagflation period.
Therefore, the focal point is still the cotton price. We will still wait and see if the Japan Earthquakes can shake the impasses of Chinese textile industry.
|
