Downstream plants going to start LNY holiday

With eased pandemic prevention and control policy, recovering logistics, cold weather and rising feedstock price, the domestic demand for winter fabrics improved since early-Dec, especially fabrics for thermal winter apparels and warm beddings. The online sales of milk velvet beddings apparently grew. Replenishment appeared when the demand is expected to improve in 2023. Many fabric mills delayed their holiday schedule for the Lunar New Year's (LNY) holiday stimulated by rigid demand and speculative procurement. The run rate obviously ascended and stocks of grey fabrics declined well. Downstream buyers showed higher buying interest in feedstock. However, as the spread of pandemic affected by attendance rate of factories, the run rate of downstream plants dived.

The operating rate of downstream plants rapidly declined this week in Zhejiang and Jiangsu, with that of DTY plants, fabric mills and printing and dyeing plants down by 13%, 18% and 24% respectively over last Friday, which may reduce further tomorrow

Retail sales of consumer goods totaled 3.8615 trillion yuan in November, down 5.9% from a year earlier, with clothing, shoes and hats and knitwear down 15.6%, according to the data from the National Bureau of Statistics. According to the latest data from the China Customs, China's textile and clothing exports reached 24.386 billion US dollars in November 2022, down 14.62% from the same period last year.

The flow of people in many shopping malls decreased rather than increased when the pandemic prevention and control policy is eased in Dec. Some consumers were mainly worried about being infected and dare not go to relatively densely populated indoor places, which affects the recovery of offline stores. On the other hand, the number of new infections has increased in a large area all over the country, and most of the enterprises and institutions have even been infected, and the number of employees in downstream terminal enterprises has also increased significantly.

In general, warmer textile industry is mainly stimulated by the alleviated pandemic prevention and control policies. Most are demand for winter products. After the replenishment for winter products ended and the intensive restocking at the end of year gradually being released, this periodical end-user warmth may have during tail-in stage. Increasing workers are infected by COVID-19 pandemic. Downstream plants are going to start holiday for the Lunar New Year's holiday. According to the survey made by CCFGroup, some downstream plants will, shut down for holiday from Dec 25 to end-Dec, and the rest will stop production in early-Jan.