A future in the apparel industry
It is not to be taken for granted that, in the future, the Biellese textile cluster will be a garment production focal point, because it is here, even with its great difficulties, that lies the last remaining entire textile production chain in Europe, capable of working wool and other noble fibres, such as cashmere, vicuña, alpaca, camel and others, from their grease state to fabrics. Garment producers will probably always look for the excellence of fabrics made with natural fibres, and Biella can also guarantee the intangible value of real made in Italy.
The third consideration analyzing the Biella export results is that the world economy is changing gear differently by area. One clear example comes from Biellese textile machinery producers, that in the first half of 2013 lived a serious setback (-23.7% compared to the same period of 2012), mainly due to the stop of orders from China and India. The two Asian economic giants are living a slowdown in their impetuous economies for different reasons: for political causes in India, for an overload of production capacity in China. But for the textile machinery sector located in Biella the result is the same: the very early stages of the textile chain are suffering. This effect has started to reflect on the Biellese yarn export performances towards China (-2% in the first half of 2013 compared to 2012), whereas fabrics and garment kept on recording positive trends in the same country (+8.82 and +22.37%).
Europe keeps on being the main market for the Biella textile and garment sector, absorbing more than 70% of the value of its trade abroad. Recovery signs come from Germany, France, Austria, Portugal, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, that, in different ways, increased their purchases of yarns or fabrics from Biella in the first half of 2013; Spain, instead, seems to be going through a strong crisis, ceasing to buy Biella fabrics (-77.13%) and yarns (-22.79%). Outside Europe, positive results have been recorded towards Switzerland, Turkey, South Korea and Russia, while a general decrease in sales has been stated towards United States of America, Japan and Hong Kong
«Performances of the various markets are uneven – Andrea Fortolan, President of the Biella Chamber of Commerce, commented – and this is not always due to poor attractiveness of our products, because we know that even developing countries are living in a different way the effects of recession in other parts of the world. That’s why we must maintain and, if possible, multiply the efforts that the chamber system is implementing to support companies in dealing with the process of internationalization. Training, services, support, contributions, facilitating contacts and exchanges: this is the recipe that in recent months, for example, has been put into the field for our companies in the textile segment through the “Integrated Industrial Sector Project”. Results tell us that it works».
