The global textile sentiment reading is improving, but the magnitude and direction of that improvement deserve scrutiny. The 40th ITMF Global Textile Industry Survey puts the business sentiment balance at -23 percentage points. While this marks a clear rebound from earlier lows, it remains deeply in contraction territory. The current uptick is more about sentiment repair than any substantive reversal in orders, capacity, or profitability.
The Real Quality of the Recovery
Breaking it down by region, South Asia and Africa are the only areas showing positive sentiment, continuing to absorb yarn and garment capacity transfers and emerging as the primary engines of global textile growth. Europe, North America, and Central America show sharply negative readings, with weak end-consumer demand compounded by persistent brand destocking that is unlikely to reverse in the short term. East Asia and Southeast Asia, as traditional manufacturing bases, also hold cautious outlooks.
The supply chain continues to show a pattern of strength at both ends and weakness in the middle. Demand for green differentiated products such as recycled fibers and bio-based fibers is more resilient. Midstream segments face pronounced pressure, with spinning, dyeing and finishing, and textile machinery enterprises under strain, and the dyeing segment posting the weakest sentiment. The core reason is that downstream brands remain conservative on capital expenditure, unwilling to invest in new equipment, leaving midstream processing with weak bargaining power as raw material, energy, and environmental costs squeeze margins.
The order side is equally challenging. The global new orders index improved slightly but remains in negative territory. Average order backlog stands at just 2.3 months, and capacity utilization is 71%, far below pre-pandemic levels. The six-month outlook balance rose to +19 percentage points, but 46% of surveyed companies expect conditions to remain largely unchanged, with optimistic expectations lacking support from long-cycle, large-volume orders.
Signals from Keqiao's Order Structure
At China's core fabric hub, the Keqiao market in Shaoxing, post-holiday performance echoes the global trend. Autumn-winter fabrics have entered the procurement window, with woolen, brushed, thermal stretch, and outdoor functional fabrics seeing more inquiries. Domestic apparel brands, e-commerce buyers, and secondary wholesalers are visiting to inspect samples, send samples, and run trials. Foot traffic is recovering, but the activity is concentrated in samples and small orders, with large-volume orders still hard to find.
The current ordering logic centers on trial sales and on-demand replenishment. Orders of tens or hundreds of meters continue to rise in share, while long and large orders are scarce, a classic small-batch quick-response pattern. Conventional commodity fabrics face severe internal competition, with quotations under pressure and thin margins. Differentiated fabrics with functional, recycled, or special texture attributes see more stable inquiries and relatively ample room for price negotiation. This structural divergence means that a fabric supplier's product mix capability is replacing production scale as the key variable determining profitability.
Domestic and export divergence is also evident in Keqiao. Domestic customers focus on autumn-winter launches, with high sampling frequency and fast delivery requirements. Export buyers are more cautious, with European and American clients ordering conservatively and splitting orders significantly, while requirements for environmental certifications, chemical controls, and carbon-related documentation continue to rise. Many export merchants are proactively shifting toward Belt and Road, Southeast Asian, and African markets to offset pressure from weak European and American demand.
Weaving and dyeing operations also remain cautious. Weaving and dyeing factories in Jiangsu and Zhejiang have not ramped up capacity quickly after the holiday, with enterprises scheduling production on demand and avoiding advance greige stockpiling or large-scale production, consistent with the global finding that companies are reluctant to expand. Many Keqiao merchants have proactively adjusted strategies, reducing low-value conventional fabric inventory, increasing recycled and functional fabric reserves, and leveraging the Keqiao quality infrastructure one-stop platform to improve testing and certification capabilities for overseas green compliance requirements.
The three core industry risks are weak demand (56%), raw material price volatility (42%), and rising energy costs (41%). Combined with the密集 rollout of European and American green compliance regulations, carbon footprint verification, environmental claim substantiation, and anti-fast-fashion legislation are raising export barriers. For export-oriented enterprises, compliance capability is shifting from a bonus point to an entry ticket.
Impact Across the Supply Chain
The global textile industry will not see a comprehensive recovery over the next six months. The rebound will be slow and uneven. South Asia and Africa will continue to release capacity dividends. European and American end demand remains weak, with green compliance costs rising. Traditional manufacturing regions face persistent order pressure. The domestic market will continue its structural行情, with seasonal autumn-winter fabric inquiries warming up, but the characteristics of fragmented and short orders will not change.
For buyers, supply-side fragmentation means delivery flexibility and low minimum order quantities matter more than price negotiation. For factories, the risk of blind capacity expansion far exceeds the risk of missing a wave of demand; on-demand scheduling and controlling greige inventory are more prudent strategies. For export enterprises, the pace of emerging market deployment and the depth of green certification reserves will determine order acquisition capability over the next two to three quarters.