Since the beginning of reform and opening up, the overall size of the textile industry in Guangdong has increased by leaps and bounds. This has become an important production base, distribution center and export base for China's textile industry.
In 2005, the textile industrial output valued at 215.703 billion yuan in Guangdong Province, ranking fourth in the country. Textile and apparel exports reached US $22.156 billion, ranking second, of which, garment exports earned $15.733 billion, taking the top spot in the country.
At present, Guangdong's textile and garment industry is still in a period of rapid development. In January-August this year, textile and clothing exports registered $2l.250 billion, growing 62.90 percent over the same period last year, once again ranking the first place in the nation.
After 20 years of development and adjustment, Guangdong cotton textile industry has formed into a certain scale, with more advanced industrial equipments, the province's cotton textile production capacity in 2005 was about 1.5 million cotton textile spindles, more than 50 percent of the production equipments were imported in 1990s, with about 70,000 rotor spinning machines and 4,320 air jet spinning spindles.
In 2005, cotton yarn output reached 366,400 tons, of which, more than 60 percent was high-grade non-knot yarn. There are more than 30,000 various shuttle-less looms, with weaving rate of 45 percent, higher than the national average of 24.4 percent, of which denim rate is over 95 percent.
Guangdong in 2005 produced 3.123 billion meters of dyed cloth, ranking No. 3 in the country, of which: denim production was 1.5 billion meter, accounting for about 40 percent of the national denim output, ranking number one in the country.
Yarn dyed and denim industries integrate many working processes, including weaving and dyeing, it is a deep-processing industry through various equipments. It has played an important role in textile industry, and its products include yarn-dye cloth and denim. In Guangdong’s yarn-dyed industry, denim is a leading product.
Guangdang is China's largest production base for denim, with large quantity and wide area, followed by Jiangsu Changzhou region, Shandong Zibo region.
According to incomplete statistics, currently, Guangdomng has over 250 denim starch-dyeing lines, annual production capacity is more than 1.5 billion square meters, accounting for about 40 percent of the country’s total output.
Guangdong mainly produces cotton yarn-dyed fabrics, but also makes the production of high count cotton-polyester yarn cloth. Cotton-hemp blended fabrics and texturized yarn-dyed products.
A full range of denim products, ranging from 3.5 0Z--16 0Z weight are also available, here. The total number of new products has kept increasing and technological content and value added products are continuously improved. A number of more competitive brands have been emerged.
In recent years, denim investment has been overheated, which has, to a certain extent, led to the excess capacity at low level and disorderly competition. The expansion of ordinary denim production capacity is unlimited. Several denim industry clusters mostly produce the middle and lower ends products which are identical and less competitive, and profit margins are negligible, so they have to create efficiency basically through massive production.
On the other hand, large-scale production of lower grade denim requires a large amount of cotton. As there no cotton produced here, it needs to be purchased from other provinces or countries.
In the globalization era, the international textile and apparel market is in no shortage of products, while brands are the weapons in competition. In the face of the growing number of anti-dumping safeguards and technical barriers, the road for textile enterprises will be narrower and increasingly difficult, if the focus is on quantity and low-price competition. Only by the development of high quality and high value-added products, could Guangdong improve its competitiveness. In order to become a powerful textile hub, this province has to promote its development pattern through implementing brand strategy.
