The cotton spinning industry's profit recovery is being choked by a broken price transmission mechanism. At the 2026 China Cotton Textile Association Raw Material Industry Chain Branch meeting held in Qingdao on August 13, association president Dong Kuiyong bluntly stated that the biggest difficulty is that rising raw material costs cannot be effectively passed on to end users, and traditional fine management models alone are no longer sufficient. The closed-door meeting, which gathered core players such as Tongsheng Cotton and the National Cotton Trading Market, was essentially seeking new profit anchors for the entire industry.
Event Background
The timing of the meeting is telling. It comes during the industry's off-season, with weak terminal demand and restructuring of foreign trade patterns, cotton spinning enterprises generally face the dual squeeze of rising costs and insufficient orders. In the work report, branch head Wei Gangmin reviewed the past year's efforts: multiple recommendations to authorities, in-depth research in production areas, and building upstream-downstream exchange platforms. Behind these actions lies the decisive role of raw material supply chain stability—every fluctuation in cotton prices forces a reconfiguration of cost logic for downstream yarn and grey fabric.
Notably, the meeting put policy topics such as cotton system reform, import quota reform, target price reform, and reserve cotton rotation on the table. This signals that the industry is no longer passively accepting raw material prices, but hopes to improve cotton users' bargaining position through policy adjustments. For buyers, these policy trends directly affect raw material procurement costs and delivery schedules in the coming quarters.
Industrial Impact
Among the four paths proposed by Dong Kuiyong, the application of financial tools ranks first. This sends a clear signal: relying solely on market judgment and inventory management can no longer hedge against volatility; enterprises need to learn to use futures and options to lock in profits. For small and medium-sized spinning mills, this is both a barrier and an opportunity—the past experience-based pricing model is being replaced by a demand for more professional risk management capabilities.
The second path is equally noteworthy: bringing polyester staple fiber, viscose staple fiber, Lyocell, and bio-based fibers into the raw material security vision. This is not a simple substitution logic, but rather dispersing cotton price risk by adjusting product structure. In fact, the application proportion of non-cotton fibers in denim, home textiles, and other fields has been rising in recent years. If enterprises can develop blended and interwoven products, they can both alleviate cost pressure and open new market tracks.
The meeting also emphasized the value of supply chain rapid response capability. China's cotton textile industry has a complete industrial system and large-scale production advantages, which determines that the 'small order, quick response' model is more competitive during export pressure. For foreign trade companies, this means order-taking strategies need to shift from large batches and long cycles to flexible delivery, while strengthening information coordination with upstream raw material suppliers to avoid missing windows due to raw material shortages.