Situation Improves For First Time Since Nov 2021 – ITMF
Despite remaining in negative territory, the business situation has improved worldwide for first time since November 2021 in July 2023.
An increasing number of companies have adapted to the harsh business environment and are now reporting improvements.
This is the summing up of an International Textile Machinery Federation (ITMF) survey conducted in the first fortnight of July 2023.
“A regional analysis shows that Asia is struggling the most and South America is back in positive territory and all regions remain optimistic about the situation in 6 months-time, except for East Asia,” ITMF stated.
Weavers, knitters, dyers, finishers and printers are the main segments where the expectations have turned negative.
“Order intake remains negative in all regions and all segments despite a slight increase recorded in July 2023 and order backlog also fell to the lowest level recorded in the GTIS,” the Switzerland based body added.
Garment, home textile and technical textile producers have registered significant improvements.
Globally, companies are not expecting order intake to improve in such a manner that order backlog goes up significantly.
“Capacity utilisation has steadily decreased in Asia and Europe since 2021 and dropped for home textile and technical textile producers lately,” ITMF said.
According to the textile machinery body, a second distant concern is inflation closely followed by higher raw material prices, geopolitics and higher energy prices.
“However, some positive signs are that costs for logistics, energy and raw material have fallen in the past few months and Geopolitics has not risen in the ranking,” ITMF shared.
96 percent of garment manufacturers report average or low inventory levels, while spinners, weavers, knitters, and fibre producers report the highest inventories.
