“This year, the domestic epidemic is under control, and the epidemic in India and Vietnam is very severe abroad, and many orders have been transferred to us,” Ding Yousheng said, ” Now that the orders have come, customers can see our supply chain capabilities and will not leave again. We must stabilize these customers in the future, and next year will be a critical year for the take-off of Yudu’s clothing industry.”
“Since July, the clothing business has almost recovered. After August, the order list is very full, and it will be next year. Some orders are transferred from overseas,” business owner Xie Longfa told reporters .
Xie Longfa’s small business is located in Yudu County, Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province. If you don’t mention that this is the starting point for the Long March of the Central Red Army, not many people may know it, but it is such a county. It hides the secret of my country’s strong garment industry.
Official statistics show that in August, the country’s textile exports were US$14.72 billion, a year-on-year increase of 47%; clothing exports were US$16.21 billion, a year-on-year increase of 3.2%, achieving positive monthly growth for the first time this year. increase. Specific to Yudu County, as of September 2020, the main business revenue of the county’s textile and clothing industry this year was 28.734 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.73%. For cities and counties, behind such data is a story about industrial transfer, a story about fighting the epidemic and seizing industrial opportunities, and a story about poverty alleviation.
1
Dongguan workers return to their hometowns to make clothes
“About 500,000 pieces of clothes are shipped out of the factory a year”
Xie Longfa, 40 years old this year, left his hometown in Yudu to work in Dongguan, Guangdong when he was 15 years old, and entered a garment factory. He said that at that time, many fellow workers were working in garment factories in Dongguan. New people who wanted to join the factory had to “recruit new ones from the old”, and it was a three-belt-one arrangement, that is, three old workers could introduce a new worker.
After working in the clothing industry for more than ten years in Dongguan, Xie Longfa returned to Yudu 5 years ago and opened a A small clothing workshop, the whole family is mobilized, old and young. Now, his company has fifty or sixty workers, and the production workshops are located in different places. It is said to be a factory, but it is actually a shop on the ground floor similar to a multi-story building in an urban village. Each shop is less than 200 square meters and has about a dozen workers working there.
The impression given by Yudu is that garment companies like Xie Longfa seem to be everywhere. Whether it is industrial parks, urban areas, or villages and towns, garment workers are concentrating on work.
“About 500,000 pieces of clothes are shipped out of the factory a year,” Xie Longfa said. “We went into the factory to look for manufacturers at that time. Now it’s our turn to recruit workers. It’s hard to find them.”
Around his workshop, there are all kinds of garment factories, densely packed with various recruitments. advertise. An advertisement reads: “Our factory makes chiffon shirts all year round. It is self-operated and sold. The unit price is reasonable. Wages are paid on the 5th of every month. Perfect attendance bonus is 100 yuan/month.” There are also companies recruiting lathe workers, edge workers, and ironing workers, with advertisements emphasizing “ample supply.”
The difficulty in finding workers makes Xie Longfa anxious, but having enough orders is what makes the workers happy. A 62-year-old female worker said that she had nothing to do in the first half of the year because of the epidemic, but now she is doing well and can earn more than 2,000 yuan a month.
Ding Yousheng, director of the Yudu County Textile and Garment Industry Cluster Office, calls small businesses like Xie Longfa “satellite factories.” He told a reporter from China Economic Weekly that there are more than 3,000 such companies in Yudu, employing as many as 300,000 people.
2
“Many orders have been transferred to us”
In Yudu, satellite factories are as dense as grass. However, most companies are still in the imitation and OEM stages. Technology The content is low, the added value of the products is low, and there are few local brands. Most of the companies are contract processing companies, and most of them accept second- and third-hand orders from Guangdong, Fujian and other places, and the overall competitiveness is insufficient.
dollars”.
Another problem in Yudu’s clothing industry is that the industrial chain is still relatively simple, such as raw materials and buttons. There is a lack of related enterprises such as thread making, embroidery, washing, packaging, and logistics.
However, the situation is improving. Ding Yousheng introduced that Yudu is very close to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and has the policy advantage of “Several Opinions of the State Council on Supporting the Revitalization and Development of the Former Central Soviet Areas such as Southern Jiangxi”, which has a strong attraction for the coastal garment industry. Moreover, when enterprises are relocating, they are also upgrading their industries. This is a great opportunity for inland areas.
The workshops and satellite factories of large brand companies present completely different production scenarios. On one side, there is traditional manual workshop production;Orders pick up
Due to the spread of the epidemic in India and Sri Lanka, many orders have returned to China. The price increases of bulk commodities such as cotton and chemical fibers in the upstream have driven up the prices of yarns. Since September, cotton/viscose staple fiber/viscose filament/polyester staple fiber/polyester filament have increased by 4%/9% respectively. 0%/1%/3%, yarn up 3%). The capacity utilization rate of many OEM companies has rebounded from the lowest 50% in April and May to 80-95%, and the recovery trend is obvious.
3. It should be noted that most external orders are emergency orders. Once the epidemic situation improves, domestic factories may These additional orders will be lost.
India is the world’s largest cotton producer, the world’s largest jute producer, and the world’s second largest silk producer. Its yarn production capacity accounts for 22% of the world’s. Textile revenue has always been one of the main pillars of the Indian economy and one of India’s largest sources of foreign exchange earnings. The textile industry accounts for about 15% of India’s total export revenue. The large outflow of orders here is due to the shutdown of the textile industry due to the impact of the new coronavirus.
The transferred orders are mainly concentrated in the home textile sector. There are two reasons for this phenomenon. “First China has strong control over the epidemic, and compared with other countries, has the ability to accept orders for resumption of work and production; secondly, domestic cotton prices are relatively low, and it has a price advantage brought by low cost.”
In addition to home textile orders, some other foreign orders in the textile industry have also been transferred to domestic production. Luo Liangzhen’s company mainly produces handbags, luggage, belts and other products. Around August, a customer suddenly gave the company many orders that were originally in India, mainly wallets and handbags.
So, what is the impact of some foreign textile and garment industry orders returning to China on domestic textile companies?
In the first half of this year, the domestic textile industry was basically at a standstill, especially in the area of foreign trade orders. The inventory in the textile industry continued to accumulate. For downstream factories, both capital and inventory costs were Enterprises have brought greater pressure. With the restart of the European and American economies, the transfer of these orders to the country is a great benefit for downstream enterprises. According to their research on some downstream enterprises, home textiles in large supermarkets in Europe and the United States The demand is very large, because there was no replenishment during the epidemic, resulting in the inventory of these household items in supermarkets being exhausted, so the intensity of replenishment is very strong.
However, most of these orders are emergency orders. Once the epidemic situation in India improves, domestic factories may lose these additional orders. At present, orders are returning and factories are increasing part of their production capacity and adding some special products. skilled workers, but the overall saturation level of orders is not very high.
</p
