Industrial analysts
of the textile industry research center in Taiwan
say that consumption of fibers in the mainland
has now surpass that in the United States and
become the world’s largest, and that in
the future ten years, the mainland will also
be the market with most rapid increase in fiber
consumption.
The United States and Canada constitute the
second largest fiber consuming market in the
world and Western Europe ranked the third, followed
by South Asia and India. Taiwan region of China,
Korea and Japan are three major fiber producing
areas in Asia. However, as their inside markets
are too small, they can not become the main
consuming markets. Africa, Latin America, East
Europe and the Middle East also cannot because
of low income.
In the past 20 years, the increase rate of
demand in the fiber market has remained at 3%,
and the demand reached 6300 tons in 2000. In
that year, the consumption of fibers in the
world was 8.7kg per person on average, and those
in the United States, Canada, Korea, Japan,
West Europe and the mainland and Taiwan of China
were higher that the average figure while those
in Latin America, Southeast Asia, East Europe,
India and the Middle East were lower.
In the future the consumption of fibers will
increase by 2 million tons annually. Calculated
with the production capacity of synthetic fiber
plants on medium scale, ten to twenty new plants
should be constructed every year in the world
to meet the demand of the market.