The “World Viscose – Trends in Demand and Supply” is the Fourth compendium from YarnsandFibers presenting the demand and supply trends in manmade fiber industry. Time series on trends from 1990 to 2007 on production, imports, exports and apparent consumption is presented countrywise for 13 countries including all major Asian countries, USA and West Europe.

In this Report we have assesses the impact of the expiry of the MFA and ATC and the scenario postWTO in global manmade fibre/filament industry and natural fibres, particularly cotton, and how each country prepared and positioned itself in the global market. The analysis assesses the positions of fibres/filaments industry and their producers and consumers as events unfolded. Like in case of MFA, the period under consideration is pre1995, for ATC it is 1995 to 2004 and postWTO it is 2005 to 2007.

The purpose of this compendium is to serve as a basic information infrastructure for textile companies and to all those who are related to fibres and yarns industry. The compendium will also serve as a ready to use reference and the presentation help easy and quick consumption of the information.

The Report is divided into two sections: Global View and Region/Country wise View.

It begins with summarising the events and the Principles Guiding World Trade.

The first section covers World production of manmade and natural fibers for the period 1980 to 2007. This section covers time series on production of polyester with its two streams the staple fibre and filament yarn, nylon – staple fibre and filament yarn, viscose – staple fibre and filament yarn and acrylic staple fibre. Among the natural fibres, the report covers production of cotton in detail and summarily wool and silk. The aggregation is done for each of fibre group namely manmade fibre – cellulosic and synthetic, and natural fibres. They are further aggregated into total fibres production. Also tabulations on capacity, production, export, import and apparent consumption volume, compound annual rate of growth (CARG) and percentage share in World total of respective fibre/filament in region/country.

The second section covers details on viscose (staple fibre and filament yarn) producing countries. In all 13 countries are covered under seven continental regions namely Africa, Asia, North America, Central and South America, West Europe, Central and East Europe, CIS, Middle East and Oceania. The countries are China, Taiwan, Korea, India, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan, Malaysia, USA, Mexico, Brazil, Turkey and West Europe as a whole. Tabulation also includes volumes of capacity, production, export, import and apparent consumption, along with CARGs for the ATC and postWTO periods and their respective positions in 1995 and 2005, the first year of ATC and postWTO.

The report will be useful at all levels of decision makers and particularly, handy for textile corporate and business planner.

The data on manmade fibre and natural fibre is available in myriad of sources. We have collated the data from best and authentic sources after verifying the same with industry peers. In our endeavour to serve our clients, we shall release the next report in 2009 with updated data for 2008 and also incorporating projections over the period of next five years.

Viscose staple and filament production grew 11% in 2007, the fast growing segment among manmade fibre/yarns. During the year 400,000 tons of capacity was added, comprising almost entirely of staple fibre. Filament capacity addition was only 7,700 tons during the year. Production of staple fibre grew 13% while that of filament was up by 0.4%.

VSF production in China increased 18% while that of VFY was up 7%. However, consumption increased at a slower pace of 12% in case of VSF and faster at 10% in case of VFY. During the year, China exported 120,000 tons of VSF accounting for almost 25% of global trade.

India, the third largest producer and consumer of VSF recorded 14% increase in production while it exported around 25,000 tons. In case of VFY, India’s production declined in 2007 by 2%. IT consumes around 250,000 tons of VSF per annum and around 40,000 tons of VFY. In 2007, VSF consumption increased 12% for VSF while it declined 4% for VFY.

Indonesia is the second largest producer and consumer of VSF. It is also the second largest exporter of VSF. It accounts for 11% of global capacity and contributes 13% of the supplies. During 2007, VSF production in Indonesia increased 16% while consumption was up 32% and accounted for almost 10% of global consumption.