Analysis of China Towel Export Market
Market distribution: Stable in the United States, Japan and Europe, and strong growth in Russia and ASEAN
In 2012, my country’s export of towel products was 2.96 billion US dollars, an increase of 3.4%. The top three export markets were Japan, the United States and the European Union. The total exports of these three markets reached 1.45 billion US dollars, accounting for 49% of total towel exports. The annual decrease was 3%, as shown in Figure 5. Among them, the US market grew by 6.7%, which was better than the industry-wide average growth rate of exports, while the Japanese and EU markets fell by 5.8% and 7.1% respectively. Strong growth in emerging markets such as Russia and ASEAN stabilized the overall growth pattern of the industry. In 2012, the export to Russia was US$284 million, an increase of 73.62%, and its share of our export market increased by nearly 4%; the export of towels to the ASEAN region reached US$350 million, an increase of 22.7%, continuing to maintain a good growth trend.
Trade method: rapid growth of imported processing trade
In the towel export trade method, general trade completed 1.749 billion US dollars, a decrease of 8.1% from the previous year; imported processing trade was 676 million US dollars, an increase of 31.5%; border small trade was 434 million US dollars, an increase of 18.3%, as shown in the figure 6 shown.
The proportion of towel processing trade is higher than that of the whole industry, mainly because the proportion of imported materials processing trade exceeds 15% of the whole industry. Large towel companies have import quotas. Based on the difference between domestic and foreign cotton prices, companies purchase foreign cotton yarn for production, which also reflects the characteristics of the towel industry.
In the whole year, towel products exported from Shandong, Hebei, Xinjiang, Guangdong, Jiangsu and other top five provincial customs were 1.97 billion US dollars, accounting for 66.5% of total towel exports, as shown in Figure 7. Among them, the top two Shandong and Hebei are also the largest production bases of towels in my country. In addition, the ports with the largest increase in export trade volume are Heilongjiang and Tibet. In 2012, 130 million yuan of towels were exported through Heilongjiang Customs, an increase of 274% over the previous year; the value of exports through Tibet was 17.57 million US dollars, an increase of 282%.
