In January 2026, at the Pitti Filati yarn exhibition in Florence, a buyer paused for a long time in front of a microencapsulated yarn sample. When woven into fabric, this yarn releases moisturizing factors continuously through body heat activation—not a finishing agent coating, but functional substances embedded inside the fiber during the spinning stage.
The exhibitor’s price was 40% higher than ordinary merino wool yarn. The buyer didn’t haggle.
If you only look at this scene, you might think the spinning industry is entering a confident wave of innovation and prosperity. A month later, data from the Shanghai yarnexpo Spring/Summer yarn exhibition seemed to confirm this: an exhibition area of 27,000 square meters, over 600 exhibitors, and a dedicated “Bio-based Fiber Zone”—with polylactic acid, seaweed fiber, bamboo lyocell, and bio-based PTT all present. In the China Fiber Trends 2026/2027 theme, “Green Yarn New Life” and “Smart Yarn Unlimited” ranked first and second.
But dig one layer deeper into the data, and things start to look off.
The global textile yarn market was valued at US$12.4 billion in 2026, with a forecast of only US$15.7 billion by 2035—a ten-year compound annual growth rate of just 2.67% (according to Business Research Insights’ 2026 report). In any industry, this number qualifies as “tepid” and simply cannot support a grand narrative of innovation-driven recovery.
On one hand, there is innovative enthusiasm at exhibitions and a palpable order recovery that insiders sense; on the other hand, a painfully low CAGR over a decade. These two signals together create a contradiction—unless you adopt a completely different interpretative framework.
Misread “Confidence”
First, let’s clarify the phenomena. The directional trends for AW27/28 yarns are remarkably consistent across major global exhibitions.
The core message from Pitti Filati AW27/28 can be summarized as “subtle experimentation”—no longer relying on fancy yarns, metallic threads, or exaggerated slub yarns for visual impact as in previous seasons. Instead, the focus is on engineered innovations: microencapsulated functional yarns, hollow-core insulating fibers, printed thermal insulation layers, and precision structural designs that achieve maximum warmth retention with minimal volume (according to ISPO Textrends AW27/28 trend interpretation). In ISPO’s trend themes, “Tech-Driven” and “Prescriptionism” are pushed to a more urgent position than “Sustainability”—the former emphasizes biomimetics and ultra-lightweight materials, while the latter directly calls out persistent chemicals like PFCs and PFAS, demanding a shift to bio-based alternatives.
Feedback from the Shanghai yarnexpo SS26 exhibition is similar. Leading chemical fiber companies such as Tongkun Group, Shenghong Group, Tangshan Sanyou, and Shanghai DeFulon have shifted their focus from “how much recycled polyester we made again” to “how high the heat resistance modification of PLA fiber has reached,” “what the antibacterial rate of seaweed fiber remains after 5 washes,” and “whether the elastic recovery of bio-based PTT can match spandex.” These are all engineering details—only those who have been pushed by brands to fill out technical questionnaires know what each row in these indicator tables really means.
58% of manufacturers now prioritize sustainable yarns, 44% have adopted recycled fibers, and 49% of new products use organic cotton (according to Business Research Insights). The stacked message from these three numbers is not “many companies are doing sustainability,” but “companies that haven’t done it are now the minority”—which means “sustainability” has moved past the early adopter phase into the early mainstream market. At this stage, not doing it is not a differentiation choice; it’s falling behind.
But the question arises: why at this particular time have companies suddenly ramped up investment in “subtle experiment”-level innovation?
The common explanation in the industry is “returning confidence.” The logic is straightforward: order recovery → improved corporate profits → ability to invest in R&D → intensive innovation. The phrase “returning corporate confidence” repeatedly seen in ISPO and yarnexpo exhibitor interviews echoes this narrative.
The problem with this explanation is that it doesn’t align with the macro data.
Tepid Growth
What does a global CAGR of 2.67% mean? Suppose a yarn company’s revenue in 2026 is US$100 million. At this rate, it would reach roughly US$130 million by 2035. Trying to tell a story of “heavy innovation investment” within this framework creates a funding gap.
An even more striking figure comes from Huafu Fashion—China’s largest colored-spun yarn manufacturer. A research report forecasts its core yarn business revenue growth at 8%-13% during 2025-2027 (according to Huafu Fashion 002042 research data). That’s decent for a traditional spinning company, but its computing business forecast is: revenue of nearly RMB 99 million in 2026, jumping to RMB 178 million in 2027—growth rates of 90% and 80% respectively.
For a listed company whose main business is spinning, the steepest profit increment curve is not in yarn itself, but in computing leasing and AI applications. This should not be interpreted as “spinning is failing”; a more accurate reading is that the sheer scale-expansion space for traditional spinning manufacturing has hit a ceiling.
Global fiber production in 2024 reached 132 million tons, of which polyester accounted for 78 million tons (59%) and nylon about 7 million tons (5%) (according to Fulgar 2025 industry review). Polyester’s number is enormous but barely moving—its slight fluctuations in recent years have largely tracked crude oil prices. On the natural fiber side, cotton is heavily influenced by climate and policy, while wool production has been remarkably steady for decades.
So in terms of “volume,” the global spinning industry has entered a slow lane. This means that if companies still rely on “I have good raw materials,” “I can spin finer counts,” or “my cost is lower” to differentiate, the room is extremely narrow.
So where does the innovation enthusiasm at exhibitions come from? If not spontaneous optimism, what drives it?
The Real Engine Is Not in Florence, but in Brussels
Between 2024 and 2025, the EU introduced a series of regulations targeting textiles—covering traceability, repairability requirements, minimum recycled content thresholds, and mandatory replacement deadlines for certain chemicals. The names of these regulations need not be listed here; their effect can be summed up in one sentence:
Whoever wants to sell textile products in the European market must prove where their yarn comes from, what raw materials are used, and whether it can be separated and recycled after disposal.
This means yarn companies no longer face a moral choice of “we advocate environmental protection.” It has become a math problem: invest in new processes or not? Don’t invest—European clients may stop ordering within three years. Invest—how much does cost increase and who pays for it?
In the ISPO Textrends trend interpretation, a word appears repeatedly: Pre-scription-ism. This term is chosen with precision. It refers to the process by which persistent chemicals—like PFCs and PFAS, the perfluorinated compounds commonly used in water repellents—go from “being boycotted” to “being banned by regulation.” In the communicative context of Pitti Filati, the word expands to a broader meaning: companies no longer treat “environmental protection” as a brand differentiation bonus, but as a prescription list for market entry—products that do not meet the list conditions are not even eligible to compete.
From this perspective, the sudden explosion of “bio-based” is not the result of far-sighted vision. It is a collective turn by companies, after having their screws tightened by regulations, toward the technical route that most easily explains raw material origins. The advantage of bio-based fibers lies in their molecular structure being completely different from traditional petrochemical routes—they naturally carry “I am traceable” proof. Using polylactic acid (PLA) in the fiber label makes it much easier to explain to buyers “what this is” compared to “recycled polyester”—because PLA starts from corn starch, while “recycled polyester” starts from bottles, and before being bottles, they were also petroleum.
Microencapsulated yarns, hollow-core fibers, printed thermal insulation layers—these engineered innovations, on the surface, are new toys for designers, but essentially they address the same problem: how to achieve equivalent or better functionality without using traditional chemical auxiliaries.
Take water-repellent finishing as an example. The traditional route uses C6/C8 fluorinated water repellents for after-treatment—such solutions can maintain 80% hydrostatic pressure after 20 washes, but the production, use, and disposal of fluorinated auxiliaries release PFAS. The C0 non-fluorinated solution is environmentally friendly but has durability of only 3 to 5 washes (according to industry knowledge bases).
The brand’s dilemma is clear: if they don’t choose C8, they are told “environmental issues”; if they choose C0, they are told “fails after a few washes”—consumer complaints eventually turn into returns and bad reviews. Brands pass this multiple-choice question to yarn mills and fabric mills, and yarn mills must solve it at the fiber structure level—hence microencapsulated yarns (functional substances embedded inside the fiber cross-section rather than surface coating), and bio-based waterproof membranes (not dependent on fluorinated compounds).
So you see, those eye-catching “experimental innovations” at exhibitions are not driven by “consumption is recovering, we can be imaginative.” They are driven by “those people in Brussels drew another line, and we have to cross it technically.”
The Exam Dividing Line
To put it bluntly: the actual effect of the new EU regulations in 2024-2025 is to draw a clear technical stratification line across the global spinning industry.
On one side of the line are the few companies that can prove their fiber origins, have conducted life-cycle assessments, are fully compliant with chemical substance lists, and are capable of providing Digital Product Passports. On the other side are the majority that still rely on price wars, short delivery times, and do not track raw material sources.
This has nothing to do with brand classification. Both luxury brands and basic product lines must comply, because regulations do not discriminate by track. But in terms of corporate capability, only two types can cross this line: the large chemical fiber giants (they have the capital to invest hundreds of millions in bio-based spinning lines) and the boutique spinning mills that serve high-end brands (their clients are willing to pay a 30%-40% premium for traceable raw materials and already demand high supply chain transparency).
The large group in the middle—mills that do OEM for fast fashion brands, produce regular cotton yarn for wholesale markets, or make basic fabrics for the Middle East and Africa—this threshold is a danger zone for them. Don’t do compliance upgrades, and European orders will be cut off. Do compliance upgrades, and a digital traceability system plus third-party certification costs at least several hundred thousand RMB—for a company with an annual profit of a few million, this is a cash-flow-affecting decision. More subtly, their major clients—fast fashion brands—are themselves adding a pile of ESG compliance requirements on the cost side, while continuing to squeeze prices when purchasing. The mill is squeezed in the middle: costs go up, prices don’t.
From this perspective, the fact that a buyer at Pitti Filati was willing to pay 40% more for a microencapsulated yarn without haggling does not anchor “market heat.” It signals something more precise: brands have allocated procurement budgets for “sustainable compliance,” but only if the supplier actually solves the technical questionnaire they handed over.
Huafu Fashion’s profit structure also echoes this. Its yarn segment grows steadily but modestly—8% to 13% is not bad, but compared to earlier cycles where growth often exceeded 20%, the growth pattern has changed. Now growth relies not on volume expansion (spindle scale), but on added value—colored-spun yarn is already more expensive than white yarn, and adding traceability, organic cotton certification, and emission reports enables a higher tier in the brand’s supply chain scoring system, leading to larger order shares. This is not “selling more yarn”; it is “eating into the market share of competitors who haven’t done certifications within the same product category.”
Insiders understand this logic: on the surface, it’s “industry recovery”; in reality, it’s an internal increase in market concentration.
What Is Happening at the Material End
Looking back at the dedicated “Bio-based Fiber Zone” at yarnexpo: polylactic acid, seaweed fiber, bamboo lyocell, bio-based PTT—these fibers have been pushed to center stage not by accident or a single trend agency’s hype. They share a common set of cost structures and compliance advantages.
Let’s start with lyocell. Among all regenerated cellulose fibers, lyocell is the only one that can address every criticism of environmental performance without loopholes. Viscose has good moisture absorption but poor wet strength, and the use of carbon disulfide and sulfuric acid in production, if not strictly managed, can cause serious water and air pollution. Modal is stronger than viscose but essentially follows the same viscose method improvement path. Only lyocell—using the NMMO solvent spinning process with a solvent recovery rate above 99.5% and nearly closed-loop production—can credibly claim “environmental friendliness” from production to disposal.
Lyocell’s dry strength can reach 3.8-4.2 CN/dtex, close to polyester’s strength, while its hand feel is similar to silk. Its weakness is easy fibrillation (microfibrils forming on the fabric surface after wet abrasion), but this defect can be mitigated to some extent through crosslinking finishing or raw material control. In the context of EU regulations, lyocell’s “full-process traceability” is a huge selling point—its physical path from wood pulp to fiber to fabric can be verified layer by layer, while polyester’s recycling chain (bottle flakes → recycled polyester staple fiber/filament) has weaker verifiability at certain stages.
Bio-based PTT is more complex. Traditional PTT (polytrimethylene terephthalate) uses petrochemical-derived 1,3-propanediol (PDO), but the bio-based route produces PDO via corn fermentation and then polymerizes. This switch does not change the fiber’s hand feel or elasticity (PTT is known for excellent elastic recovery and is often blended with cotton for stretch fabrics), but it changes the starting point of the supply chain’s carbon footprint calculation. For brands with carbon reporting obligations, this is a powerful “carbon reduction path” because raw material stage carbon footprint usually accounts for the largest share of a garment’s total footprint.
Seaweed fiber and PLA fiber take a completely different path. Both borrow materials from organisms—one from marine algae extracts, the other from compostable aliphatic polyester. These fibers currently cannot reach the production scale of polyester or cotton, but in tracks heavily reliant on brand stories (baby clothing, intimate apparel, medical textiles), their “natural safety” label has irreplaceable competitiveness. Seaweed fiber is naturally antibacterial and has better moisture absorption than polyester; PLA fiber’s degradability satisfies the narrative need of “disappearing when buried in soil”—though how efficiently it degrades under actual industrial composting conditions is still debated in the industry.
But looking at all these bio-based fibers together, they face a fatal common problem: scale.
Polyester reached 78 million tons in 2024; global PLA capacity is still orders of magnitude smaller. Single-line capacity for seaweed fiber is even a fraction of a percent. If brands truly want to fulfill their emission reduction commitments, they need not just small-batch “concept pieces” from a single boutique mill—they need a material that can be applied to tens of millions of products, with a cost difference not exceeding 30%.
Here emerges a fundamental contradiction: regulation forces brands to comply, brands force supply chain innovation, supply chain innovation produces solutions, but so far the solutions are only available in small batches at uneconomical costs. This contradiction explains why those bio-based samples are photographed and crowd-surrounded at exhibitions, but the actual proportion of inquiries that lead to orders is not that high.
Who Foots the Bill
This leads to the most critical link in the entire argument: cost.
If a medium-sized spinning mill wants to switch from traditional processes to a fully traceable, fully compliant technical route using partly bio-based or recycled fibers, what investment is needed?
First, raw material costs. Organic cotton is 30%-50% more expensive than conventional cotton. Recycled polyester staple fiber itself has low raw material cost (bottle flakes are widely available), but to achieve GRS certification-level traceability, additional costs for testing, certification, and the labor and system costs for issuing Transaction Certificates (TCs) mean the actual procurement price is higher than virgin polyester. Lyocell costs more than double ordinary viscose. Bio-based PTT raw material cost is currently constrained by fermentation efficiency of PDO—it will decrease with scale, but for now brands must accept a premium.
Second, system costs. Digital traceability means connecting the entire chain from raw cotton batch to yarn lot number to fabric dye lot to garment style number. This sounds like an IT issue, but for mills that still rely on Excel and paper cards, this transformation involves ERP implementation, equipment sensor installation, and adjustment of worker operating habits—each link costs more than hardware.
Third, certification costs. OEKO-TEX Standard 100 initial certification for one product category costs several thousand to tens of thousands of RMB, annual audit fees 5,000-15,000 RMB/year, and random spot-check testing fees 3,000-5,000 RMB per test. GRS initial certification costs approximately 20,000-50,000 RMB, with annual audits of 10,000-20,000 RMB. These are calculated separately for each link in the supply chain—yarn mill gets one, fabric mill gets one, garment factory gets one, and by the time it reaches the brand, three or four layers of stamps may have been added.
Add all these costs together, and saying to the market “sustainability is just a small cost increase” is dishonest. At the current low volumes, an actual cost increase of 50%-100% is normal.
So why do some still do it?
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Because the cost of not doing it is greater. If the EU Digital Product Passport regulation proceeds on schedule, non-compliant products will gradually lose access to the 27-country EU market. This is not about “making less profit”; it’s about “losing the market.”
The logic is now clear: companies are investing in innovation not because they are blindly optimistic about future demand, but because the rules have changed and the ticket has been redefined. The “returning confidence” at exhibitions is not a change in direction; it is that companies that have passed the exam see their chance to stay at the table—while those that haven’t must either accelerate their catch-up or prepare to pivot to markets that don’t require compliance.
On this topic, I previously analyzed the selection logic for fabric mills: if you are looking for Chinese suppliers that can meet these new compliance requirements, the qualification verification methods mentioned in How to Choose a Fabric Mill: A Pitfall-Avoidance Guide for New Buyers are even more applicable now—you need to look not just at the factory’s scale and price, but whether it holds valid GRS or GOTS certificates and whether it can issue Transaction Certificates for each batch.
The Overlooked Structural Shift
If the above analysis holds, what will happen in the spinning industry over the next two to three years cannot be inferred solely by looking at exhibitions and trend reports.
First, look at regional structure. Asia-Pacific currently holds 52% of the global yarn market, Europe 27%, and North America 21% (according to Business Research Insights). On the surface, Asia is absolutely dominant, but this number masks internal differences. China’s spinning strength lies in large-scale production of chemical filament and staple yarn (according to UN COMTRADE data, China’s exports of HS 5402 synthetic filament yarn and HS 5509 synthetic staple fiber yarn lead globally by a wide margin), while India, Vietnam, and Bangladesh are gradually amplifying their cost advantages in cotton yarn and conventional blended yarn.
But once EU regulations land, the advantage of purely competing on cost is diminished. Brands under regulatory pressure in the European market cannot simply use a vague “Made in Vietnam” label to deliver goods—they need to know the farm certification for the cotton, the list of chemicals used during spinning, and the wastewater emission data. Currently, the data infrastructure construction for these aspects in small and medium-sized mills in Vietnam and Bangladesh lags far behind leading companies in China’s Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces.
Here arises a counterintuitive inversion: labor costs in Chinese mills are higher than in Southeast Asia, but compliance costs are relatively lower—because leading companies have been audited round after round by major brands like Nike, Adidas, H&M, and Zara over the past five years. Digital traceability systems are already deployed, and personnel are familiar with the process of producing a full set of certification documents. If Vietnamese and Bangladeshi mills need to catch up on these compliance basics within one to two years, the learning cost and financial support required are extremely high.
So what you might actually see is that European orders for Chinese chemical filament and high-end blended yarns actually increase—not because “Chinese manufacturing is cheaper,” but because “Chinese companies are better at the compliance game.” This is not new in the industry: early Gore-Tex authorized fabric mills were only set up at Toray (Japan), Formosa Taffeta (Taiwan), and a few mainland Chinese companies; Southeast Asia did not get authorization. Technical thresholds have always been invisible trade barriers.
Drilling down to fiber categories. According to COMTRADE 2024 export data, China’s HS 5407 (synthetic filament woven fabrics, including yarn-related intermediate products) exports were US$20.3 billion, HS 5402 (synthetic filament yarn) US$7.6 billion, and HS 5509 (synthetic staple fiber yarn) US$1.8 billion—all growing. For cotton, the fastest-growing exports are HS 5208 (pure cotton ≤200g/m² woven fabrics) at US$4.3 billion and HS 5209 (pure cotton >200g/m² woven fabrics) at US$2.3 billion. These data show dual-track growth for chemical fibers and cotton, but the composition of growing categories is quietly shifting—high-value-added, traceable, functionally clear yarn categories are growing faster.
If you want to understand how to choose fabrics that comply with new regulations from a fiber selection perspective, I previously wrote an introductory article: Fabric R&D Primer: From Fiber Selection to Functional Realization – Complete Process. But now I must add a note—back when I wrote that article, the regulatory environment was not as strict. Today, the first screening criterion for “fiber selection” is no longer hand feel or strength, but “can this fiber tell its life story?”
The Metaphor of Microencapsulated Yarn
Let’s return to the microencapsulated yarn example at the beginning of this article.
The microencapsulated functional yarn displayed at Pitti Filati technically follows the “blend spinning” route—microcapsule particles are directly added to the spinning dope, so that functional substances (such as moisturizing factors, phase-change materials, vitamin E) are encapsulated by the fiber rather than attached to the surface. This is fundamentally different from functional finishing (where auxiliaries are soaked onto the fabric and then dried).
Functional finishing has poor durability; it fails after a few washes, shown in tests as a sharp performance drop after 5 washes. Functional fibers made via blend spinning have the functional substance “locked” by the polymer matrix, with durability up to 20 or even 50 standard washes. In test reports, this difference is reflected in the “initial performance retention rate after 50 washes”—an indicator that suppliers who seriously fill out brand technical questionnaires care about most.
But the difficulty of blend spinning lies in process control. Microcapsule particles must withstand spinning temperatures above 250°C—polyester and nylon melting points range between 215-260°C, and many organic substances decompose at these temperatures. Therefore, the capsule wall material, particle size, and dispersion uniformity in the polymer are core technical barriers.
More critically, yarn produced via blend spinning has almost zero recyclability—because the capsule particles become part of the fiber body and cannot be separated in downstream processes. This directly contradicts the concepts of “circular economy” and “textile-to-textile” (T2T) recycling. The “modular design” and “design for end-of-life disassembly” mentioned in ISPO trends are completely inapplicable to microencapsulated yarns.
This contradiction exposes a deep dilemma in sustainability transformation: functionality and recyclability are often mutually exclusive in materials science. To achieve waterproofing, antibacterial properties, smart temperature control, etc., chemical substances or physical particles often need to be embedded; once embedded, recycling becomes difficult. Pursuing “single material, fully recyclable” means giving up complex functionality.
Brands must make this choice between product specification sheets and ESG commitments, while yarn mills must translate this dilemma into a process feasibility report in their emails to clients—and attach test data from third-party inspection bodies.
In the past, brands made demands, and suppliers responded with “can’t do” or “price increase by X amount.” Now, brands make demands, and suppliers respond with “technically feasible, but carbon emissions will be higher than the baseline—can you accept that?” The dimensions of the problem are deepening.
Digitization Is the Hidden Examiner
Among all the costs mentioned above, one has been underestimated but will become the largest hidden expense in the coming years: digital infrastructure.
Over the past few decades, the biggest efficiency improvements in the global textile industry came from two things: the popularization of air-jet and rotor spinning (according to ITMF data, spinning mill productivity increased by 25% in five years), and the global bargaining power in supply chains.
But the EU Digital Product Passport (DPP) forcibly pulls the competitive dimension from “efficiency” to “transparency.” A spinning mill must record in real time during production the batch number of each raw material batch, chemical addition amounts, energy consumption data, and waste generation amounts, and upload this information in a standard format to the cloud for brand and regulatory review.
For a factory that already has MES (Manufacturing Execution System) and ERP in place with data flow integration, this is an incremental adjustment. For a factory still using paper routing cards and relying on the workshop manager’s memory for scheduling, this is a structural transformation—not just buying a piece of software, but a complete overhaul of production processes, personnel structure, quality control systems, and customer communication methods.
The growth logic of Huafu Fashion’s computing business is also embedded here. Once data volume on spinning lines increases, data itself becomes a manageable and monetizable asset—AI can analyze batch dyeing consistency, predict the time window when defects are most likely to occur during spinning, and optimize blending ratios to reduce raw material costs. The breadth of these application scenarios far exceeds “sending a test report online to the client.”
But when digitization goes from “optional” to “entry ticket,” it simultaneously becomes exclusionary. The 47% of global consumers who claim to need environmentally friendly textile materials (according to Business Research Insights) may not know how the supply chain data flow behind them operates, but the beneficiaries are the brands—brands can prove through data that “this sweater’s carbon emissions during spinning were 23% lower than the industry average,” which has huge marketing impact. Competing brands that cannot provide such data are forced into an increasingly narrow competition track of “pure price.”
Perhaps this is why, on the surface, you see “spinning industry recovery,” but at the deeper structural level, it is actually a reshuffling process of the survival of the fittest.
Who Is Winning, Who Is Anxious
Back to the initial contradiction: a large amount of innovation appears in an industry with only 2.67% CAGR—this doesn’t make sense unless you redefine “innovation” as “forced technological upgrades.”
With this redefinition, the flow of industrial benefits becomes clear.
Direct beneficiaries are two types of companies: first, globalized fiber giants (like Lenzing’s lyocell, DuPont’s Sorona bio-based PTT)—they control the patents and large-scale production capacity for sustainable fiber raw materials; the stricter the rules, the wider their moat. Second, medium-sized boutique spinning mills that have already completed digitization and sustainable certification—these are densely present in certain clusters in Italy, Japan, and China’s Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. In the past, these mills served luxury and high-end sportswear brands with high-margin but low-volume yarns. Now, as regulations tighten, their client base may actually expand—some competitors that used to win orders on price alone are blocked by compliance costs.
Indirectly under pressure are all small and medium-sized mills that rely on price competition and lack standardized management systems. This is not because they “don’t work hard,” but because compliance costs can be amortized across hundreds of thousands of tons of production for large companies, but for a factory with an annual output of a few hundred tons, amortization is impossible. Previously, they could answer all customer questions with “cheap.” Now customers ask “can you prove it?” which in industrial language translates to “do you have an information system?” “can you issue TCs?” “are your emission data verified by a third party?”—three questions, and the price advantage may shrink from 20% to 2%.
This pressure will not erupt within one or two years, because supply chain transformation for European brands also takes time. But it will slowly and irreversibly redraw the access lines on the global textile industry map.
On the last day of Pitti Filati AW27/28, it rained in Florence. Several representatives from Chinese spinning mills were chatting at a café outside the exhibition hall. One said, “It feels like exhibitions nowadays are not about selling yarn anymore, but about confirming who is still on the track together.”
That statement hits the mark.
