EU textile and apparel sourcing: A half-year review

Textile and apparel demand gradually weakened since Jun this year. Export performance of countries like India and Turkey were poor. EU, as the world's largest textile and apparel consumer market, its textile and apparel imports received much attention. The latest data showed that in June, EU’s import volume of textile and apparel reached 1 million tons, an increase of 9.3% year-on-year and a 5.9% decrease month-on-month. Of the total, the volume from China was 339,000 tons, increased by 5.4% year-on-year and 0.4% month-on-month. In the first half of this year, the cumulative import volume of EU’s textile and apparel increased by 11.3% year-on-year to topple 6.242 million tons, among which the volume from China was 1.902 million tons, up by 9.1% year-on-year and accounted for 30.5% of the EU's total import.

In the first half of this year, the EU-27 mainly imported textile and apparels from China, Turkey, Bangladesh, India, ASEAN countries and Pakistan. Bangladesh saw the fastest year-on-year growth in the market share, while the share of China and Turkey declined most sharply. In terms of monthly import volume of major markets, Bangladesh enjoyed the fastest growth, followed by ASEAN and Pakistan.

EU's textile and apparel imports from major origins performed well in the first half of this year, but in June, except for Pakistan, the year-on-year growth of those markets slowed down significantly. In terms of the retail sales released by the EU in recent months, the demand growth faced large pressure. The growth rate is expected to decline further in July and August.