The “World Fibre – Trends in Demand and Supply” is the Sixth annual compendium in a series from YarnsandFibers covering the trends in global demand and supply of textile fibre/filament industry. The compilation covers all major fibre producing countries accounting for 85% of global production and consumption. Time series on trends from 1990 to 2009 on production, imports, exports and apparent consumption is presented country-wise for 13 countries including all major Asian countries, USA and West Europe.
In this Report we have captured the trends seen in 2009 post the global crisis which had severely im-pacted textile fibre/filament industry including natural fibres, particularly cotton. The analysis assesses the positions of fibres/filaments industry as events unfolded.
The Report’s 271 pages are richly annotated with authoritative and unbiased objective description, and hard-to-find statistical facts. The report also provides unequivocal views on future potential while throwing light on the prevailing climate in key regional markets and projections upto 2015 of availabil-ity and demand for all fibres.
The Report is divided into two sections: Fibre-wise View and Region/Country wise View.
The first section covers World production of manmade and natural fibers for the period 1990 to 2009. 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 – cel-lulosic 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 re-gion/country.
The second section covers details on each major fibre/filament producing countries. In all 13 countries are covered in 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 periods 1990-2000, 2000-2008 and the growth rate in 2009.
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 2011 with updated data for 2010 and also in-corporating projections over the period of next five years.
A brief note on the foreign trade statistics covered in this report. There has been a mismatch between total volume of import and export of a commodity for a given year. This imbalance arise from the fact that, (1) Not all the countries report their trade data, and (2) The data source tracks select members countries only. For example, India’s export of polyester staple fibre to Angola (India’s export volume is counted in total exports), and in case Angola has not reported its trade data at all due to various rea-sons, it’s import will remained excluded from total import volume.
HIGHLIGHTS
Global availability of all kind of manmade and natural fibres were up this year after declining signifi-cantly in 2008. While natural fibres had witnessed a decline of 9.4% in 2008, manmade fibres produc-tion was down 3.7%, resulting in a fall of 6.2% in total total fibre production. In 2009, manmade fibre was just able to reverser the loss of 2008, as it grew 3.6% while natural fibre production continued to decline, although at a slower pace.
Natural fibres have been rapidly losing their share in all fibres supply to manmade segment. In 1990, natural fibres accounted for over 60% of global fibre supplies. This came down to 43% in 2000 and fell further to 41% in 2009 given the drop in cotton production.
The fibre markets in 2009 were mainly driven by chemical fibres, of which, synthetic enjoyed a growth of 3.1% and cellulosic achieved an increase of over 10%. While this development of returning to posi-tive growth in 2009 may appear to be a good sign, the entire textile and apparel industry has lost a huge processing volume and turnover in the last two years. According to a report, taking into account the long-term average growth of 3.4%, the demand shortfall in the last two years adds up to …….. thousand tons. The report further explains that as lower priced apparel was available across the world after China’s accession to WTO at the end of 2001, the short-term average annual growth rate even accounts for 5.2%. This annual growth rate would lead to a demand shortfall in the last two years of …….. thousand tons.
Cotton is produced by over a 100 countries but has traditionally concentrated in a few. The last three decades saw four leading countries have accounted for an increasing share of world cotton produc-tion. China, India, USA and Pakistan, which accounted for less than 50% of world production in 1970, have increased their share to almost 75% in 2009. Increases in China and India, in particular, have re-sulted in an increased share of Asia in world production.
World cotton area continues to vary from year to year, as it did in the last several decades, although the range of variation shift to lower levels due to increased competition with wood and fuel crops and tighter resources constraints. In particular, constraints in water availability due to lack of rainfall in In-dia which limits cotton acreage dramatically. In 2009, area under cotton declined 1% globally, the third consecutive year of area shrinkage. In 2009, only 30.43 million hectares were sown under cotton declining 5.50 million hectares from its peak of 35.95 million hectare sown in 1995.
Global availability of all kind of manmade and natural fibres were up this year after declining signifi-cantly in 2008. While natural fibres had witnessed a decline of 9.4% in 2008, manmade fibres produc-tion was down 3.7%, resulting in a fall of 6.2% in total total fibre production. In 2009, manmade fibre was just able to reverser the loss of 2008, as it grew 3.6% while natural fibre production continued to decline, although at a slower pace. 
demand shortfall in the last two years of …….. thousand tons. 
