The latest industry report from the China National Textile and Apparel Council shows that in H1 2026, the textile machinery sector achieved double-digit growth in industrial value-added for above-scale enterprises, while the average growth of the entire textile industry was only 3.3%. This contrast means that the textile machinery sector has become the first link in the textile chain to emerge from the adjustment period, and its recovery is not a broad-based upturn but driven by structural demand for intelligent and green equipment.
Background
In the first half of the year, the textile machinery industry saw a continuous improvement in prosperity, with steady increases in operating rates and full order books at leading enterprises. Notably, the market is not uniformly rising, and sub-sectors show significant divergence. Spinning machinery performed the most strongly, with strong demand for intelligent complete sets such as ring spinning, air-jet spinning, and rotor spinning. This is partly due to the intelligent upgrading wave among domestic cotton spinning enterprises, and partly because of capacity expansion in central and western industrial clusters like Xinjiang, jointly driving a substantial increase in orders.
Weaving machinery, however, shows polarization: high-end air-jet looms and special fiber weaving equipment are favored, while demand for traditional general-purpose models is declining. Chemical fiber machinery, knitting machinery, and dyeing and finishing equipment are still in a slow recovery phase, with downstream investment attitudes conservative and the sector's recovery pace relatively flat. This divergence indicates that downstream users prefer equipment that can directly improve efficiency and reduce energy consumption, rather than simple capacity expansion.
Industry Impact
In foreign trade, domestic textile machinery continues to gain orders in emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, thanks to its outstanding cost-performance advantage, with spinning and weaving equipment exports performing particularly well. Leading enterprises are accelerating overseas layout, improving technology export and localized service models, making the overseas market a new growth pole. This means that in the context of global supply chain restructuring, domestic equipment has shifted from "substitutable" to "preferred," but companies also need to be wary of the risk that overseas service capabilities cannot keep up with sales growth.
On the profitability side, the situation is mixed. The industry's overall efficiency is showing signs of repair, but fluctuations in raw material prices such as steel and motors directly raise manufacturing costs; intense homogeneous competition and price wars in the low-end segment continue to squeeze profit margins. Meanwhile, downstream textile enterprises have limited willingness for large-scale expansion and are more cautious in investment decisions, so the foundation of the recovery still needs to be consolidated. For equipment manufacturers, the old path of relying solely on scale expansion is no longer viable; they must shift toward higher value-added segments.
Technological innovation is becoming the core way out. R&D focuses on high-speed and high-efficiency production, digital control systems, low-carbon and energy-saving, and flexible equipment suitable for small-order, quick-response models. Innovative products such as intelligent spinning lines, AGV warehousing and transfer systems, AI online quality inspection equipment, and low-energy dyeing and finishing equipment are accelerating their application, and the localization of core components is steadily advancing. Many enterprises have moved beyond simply selling hardware to providing full-process complete solutions, with the share of technical service revenue continuing to rise. The industry's value is upgrading from "equipment manufacturing" to an integrated service model of "equipment + software + operation and maintenance."
The gradient transfer of the domestic textile industry also releases considerable demand for equipment renewal. Capacity continues to migrate to central and western regions, driving equipment procurement for new production lines; enterprises in the eastern coastal areas are accelerating the elimination of old high-energy-consuming equipment, opening a new cycle of equipment renewal. The conversion of old and new drivers paves a long-term growth track for the textile machinery industry, and also means that equipment manufacturers need to provide differentiated product portfolios according to regional demand differences.