Textile Machinery
Overall shipments slightly down in 2015

Shipments in some of the textile machinery segments experienced declines in 2015. Deliveries of new short-staple spindles fell by nearly 8 per cent from 2014 to 2015. Shipped long-staple spindles and open-end rotors decreased by 61 per cent and 6 per cent, respectively. The number of shipped draw-texturing spindles fell by 26 per cent and shipments for new circular knitting machines by 6 per cent year-on-year. In contrast, deliveries of shuttleless looms increased by 14 per cent in 2015 and shipments of flat-knitting machines rose by 52 per cent.

These are the main results of the 38th annual International Textile Machinery Shipment Statistics (ITMSS) just released by the International Textile Manufacturers Federation (ITMF). The report covers six segments of textile machinery: spinning, draw-texturing, weaving, large circular knitting, flat knitting and finishing. The 2015 survey has been compiled in cooperation with over 140 textile machinery manufacturers, representing a comprehensive measure of world production. This number does not include the numerous Chinese companies that are represented by the so called “District”. Therefore, the amount of participating companies is likely to be around 200.

Spinning

Shipments of new short-staple spindles fell by nearly 8 per cent year-on-year in 2015, the second decrease in a row. The level of short staple spindles declined to about 9 million spindles, the lowest level since 2009. Most of the new short staple spindles (92 per cent) were shipped to Asia, whereby shipments fell by 7 per cent year-on-year. Thereby China, the world’s largest investor of short-staple spindles, experienced a decline of 26 per cent, whereas deliveries to Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam rose by 97 per cent, 4 per cent and 31 per cent, respectively. All of the five largest investors for short-staple spindles in 2015 originate from Asia. Including China these are India, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Indonesia.

Global shipments of long-staple (wool) spindles decreased sharply by 61 per cent from around 138,000 in 2014 to nearly 54,000 in 2015. Deliveries to Turkey, one of the main investors of long-staple spindles in the last few years, fell by 83 per cent from 67,000 in 2014 to over 11,000 spindles in 2015. Shipments of open-end rotors fell by 6 per cent to a level over 3,83,000 rotors in 2015. About 81 per cent of worldwide shipments of open-end rotors were destined for Asia. Global shipments of single heater draw-texturing spindles (mainly used for polyamide filaments) fell by nearly 82 per cent from over 6,500 in 2014 to nearly 1,200 in 2015.

Weaving

In 2015, worldwide shipments of shuttleless looms increased by 14 per cent to nearly 82,000 units. Thereby, shipments of water-jet and rapier/projectile shuttleless looms increased by 24 per cent to nearly 30,000 looms and by 17 per cent to close to 32,000. In contrast, the deliveries of air-jet looms fell by over 1 per cent to a level of nearly 20,000 looms. Not surprisingly, the main destination of shipments of all shuttleless looms (air-jet, water-jet and rapier/projectile) in 2015 was Asia with 93 per cent of worldwide deliveries, of which 39 per cent were water-jet looms and 37 per cent rapier/projectile looms. In Europe and North America, 75 per cent and 25 per cent of shipments were for rapier/projectile looms, while the share of water-jet looms was only 8 per cent and 2 per cent, respectively.

Circular & flat knitting

Global shipments of large circular knitting machines fell by 6 per cent to a level of 26,700 units in 2015. Also for this category Asia is the world’s leading investor. 88 per cent of all circular knitting machines were shipped to Asia in 2015. With 53 per cent of worldwide deliveries, China is the single largest investor. India and Bangladesh rank second and third with 6,500 and 3,100 units, respectively.

The year 2015 was a very good year for the segment of electronic flat knitting machines as global shipments grew by 52 per cent to 70,100 machines, the highest level since 2011. Not surprisingly, Asia received the highest share of shipments (93 per cent).

Finishing

The 2015 edition of ITMF’s International Textile Machinery Shipments Statistics included for tenth time also data on finishing machinery. However, the questionnaire was revised to present a more accurate picture of shipments in this sector. Therefore, it is not possible to compare the this version with previous versions of the finishing machinery statistics.