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European textile imports diminish in first-half
European textiles and clothing imports each fell by 2% in the first half of the year, while the continent strengthened its clothing exports by 4%, and textiles by 2%, according to figures from l’Institut Français de la Mode (IFM).
The EU exported 12.5 billion euros worth of clothing, of which 3.2 billion went to Asia (+ 7%) and 927 million to the Mediterranean (-3%). Among the main changes, Switzerland, its largest customer, boosted orders by 11%.
Meanwhile, Europe’s fifth largest customer, China, reinforced its orders by 21% to 664 million euros. Other large order changes were also recorded in Korea (+ 11%), Canada (+ 11%) and Saudi Arabia (-12%).
On the textile side, the United States remained Europe's leading customer with 1.3 billion euros worth of goods (-1%), followed by China with 1.1 billion (+ 8%) and Turkey with 929 million (+ 6%).
Among its main customers, the largest changes concerned Hong Kong (-8%), Serbia (+ 8%) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (+ 10%).
The scale of European imports is, of course, on another scale, with 10.5 billion euros of Chinese clothing imported by the EU, which does marks a significant reduction (9%) on last year.
A decline that masks a relative stability among the major suppliers of the Union. With the exception of Burma, which has an astounding rise of 46% to 605 million euros, as well as, to a lesser extent, Switzerland (+ 24%) and Albania (+ 12%).
As for textile imports, they showed a relative stability of Chinese production at 5.2 billion euros (-1%), the leading European supplier, ahead of Turkey with 2.5 billion (-3%), India with 1.4 billion (-1%) and Pakistan with 1.2 billion (-3%).
The six-month period was mainly driven by a decline in imports of Taiwanese (-8%), Indonesian (-8%) and Thai (-9%) textiles, while Australia boosted exports to Europe by 22%.
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