China Mainland Becomes the Largest Consumer Market of Fibers...7/22/2003
 

    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.