One out of every five sweaters globally is made in Dalan, Dongguan. This wool knitting hub, producing over 900 million garments annually with a supply chain trade value exceeding 72 billion yuan, is becoming a testing ground for the wool industry's green transition. On June 24, the 95th IWTO Wool Congress opened here, with delegates from over 20 countries witnessing a critical milestone: carbon footprint accounting and traceability standards for wool are moving from concept to implementation.
Standards Race: The Data Game Behind the Green Paper
The most anticipated agenda item was the global launch of the IWTO Wool Green Paper. This document is not a simple industry report but an operational framework designed to unify traceability data across the entire supply chain. Currently, only a few companies participate, but IWTO has planned subsequent projects including customized carbon footprint standards for different production regions, durability standards, and a natural fiber industry alliance.
What does this mean? For buyers, environmental labels on wool products will no longer be mere marketing talk but verifiable data based on unified accounting logic. For factories, every step of production—carbon emissions, water use, chemical application—will be integrated into traceable digital management. Behind the Green Paper is a proactive move by the industry to address tightening environmental regulations in markets like the EU, and a crucial step in claiming discourse power.
The Dalan Model: Value Leap from OEM to Brand
Dalan's 40-year development trajectory mirrors China's textile industry integration into global markets. From early OEM to now exporting to over 100 countries, Dalan has formed a complete ecosystem from raw material processing to design, manufacturing, and trade. The congress being held here reflects the industrial cluster's urgent need for smart, green, and brand-oriented transformation.
Dalan explicitly proposed four cooperation directions: raw materials, technology, brands, and platforms. This is a pragmatic choice based on industrial reality. The raw material end needs stable, eco-friendly wool supply; the technology end requires digital and automation upgrades; the brand end must shift from 'manufacturing' to 'creating'; the platform end needs to unlock bottlenecks in domestic and international resource alignment. For foreign trade enterprises, pure capacity output is no longer competitive; they must extend to both ends of the value chain.
Youth Power and Supply Chain Restructuring
The specially arranged Wool Youth Project at the congress deserves attention. Dozens of young practitioners from different countries introduced their businesses on stage. This seemingly simple session points to a deep pain point: intergenerational transfer and knowledge renewal in the wool industry. Under the impact of fast fashion and synthetic fibers, how to communicate wool's environmental advantages as a natural fiber to a new generation of consumers is a question the industry must answer.
Thanawat Tiensin, Assistant Director-General of FAO, reminded in a video speech that behind every wool fiber is a farming family. This reminds the industry that green transition cannot focus only on factory emissions but must also include sustainable livestock farming and soil conservation on pastures. Supply chain synergy is not just between factories and brands but involves benefit distribution across the entire chain from pasture to garment.