In 2024, the global economy will continue to recover slowly in the face of multiple challenges, with inflation continuing to fall, and trade and investment recovering at a low level. Despite continued geopolitical tensions, increased trade fragmentation, and monetary policy shifts of major economies, world economic growth will remain stable on the whole. The domestic economy is on the whole stable and making steady progress. New growth drivers are gaining momentum, traditional growth drivers are being renewed and upgraded, and market confidence has been significantly boosted. In the face of the complexity of the external environment, the overall operation of the textile machinery industry throughout the year remained stable, the main economic operation indicators maintained a growth trend compared with last year, but the growth rate gradually slowed down, and the industry exports showed a warming trend and achieved positive growth throughout the year. In the various sub-sectors of textile machinery, compared with the same period last year, the sales volume of knitting machinery, weaving machinery and printing and dyeing machinery is growing, the spinning machinery has fallen, the sales volume of chemical fiber machinery products is significantly differentiated, and the sales volume of nonwoven machinery has gradually recovered and remained stable.
Running quality and efficiency
Industry revenue and profit continued to grow. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2024, the total assets of textile machinery enterprises above designated size in the country increased by 3.62% year-on-year, and the industry's operating income increased by 7.84% year-on-year, 8.31 percentage points higher than that in 2023. Since 2024, under the background of stable and good macro economy, China's textile machinery industry has shown a recovery growth trend. Although affected by the weakening of the low base effect, the growth rate of some indicators has slowed down, the industry still maintained a steady pace of development.
The business efficiency of the industry is improving. In 2024, the total profit of the industry increased by 9.36% year-on-year, due to base reasons, the profit growth gradually narrowed, but the average revenue profit rate of the industry was 7.48%, which remained above 7% throughout the year, at a relatively high level in recent years. The loss of loss-making enterprises decreased by 25.55% year-on-year, and the loss side was 15.63%, down 0.87 percentage points from 2023.
The increase in industry costs is smaller than the decrease in revenue, and the proportion of three fees is reduced. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, from January to December 2024, the total cost of textile machinery enterprises above designated size increased by 7.16% year-on-year. Operating costs increased by 8.06% year-on-year, accounting for 90.35% of the total cost; The proportion of three expenses in the whole industry was 9.65%, reduced by 0.88 percentage points compared with the same period last year, of which: sales expenses increased by 2.25% year-on-year, accounting for 3.57% of the total cost expenses; Administrative expenses increased by 2.25% year-on-year, accounting for 5.65% of the total cost. Finance expenses decreased by 23.85% year-on-year, accounting for 0.43% of the total cost expenses.
Industry asset-liability ratio increased. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, from January to December 2024, the total assets of textile machinery enterprises above designated size increased by 3.62% year-on-year, the debt increased by 5.53% year-on-year, and the asset-liability ratio of 57.91%, an increase of 1.27 percentage points compared with 2023, higher than the asset-liability ratio of 57.5% of industrial enterprises above designated size.
Industry receivables and finished goods inventory pressure increased. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2024, the accounts receivable of textile machinery enterprises above designated size increased by 17.91% year-on-year, and the inventory of finished goods increased by 18.69% year-on-year.
Industry enterprise survey
The Textile Machinery Association conducted a survey of 124 textile machinery enterprises in 2024. From the summary results, the overall operating pressure situation of the company in 2024 has improved compared with the previous three quarters. According to the survey, 59% of the enterprises' revenue exceeded the same period last year, 46.5% of the enterprises' profits increased from the same period last year, 36.9% of the enterprises' orders in hand exceeded the same period last year, and 58.2% of the enterprises' capacity utilization rate was above 80%. At present, the main problems facing enterprises are insufficient domestic market demand, excessive price competition and rising production costs. Despite the continued pressure on the industry, the industry situation in 2024 is still better than expected in the third quarter.
Import and export situation
According to customs statistics, from January to December 2024, the cumulative total of China's textile machinery imports and exports was 7.026 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 6.31%. Among them: textile machinery imports of 2.34 billion US dollars, down 21.04%; Exports reached 4.686 billion US dollars, up 3.31% year on year.
Textile machine imports
From January to December 2024, China imported textile machinery from 67 countries and regions, with a total import of 2.340 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 21.04%, which was slightly narrower than the previous three quarters.
From the import product category, the total import of auxiliary devices and spare parts ranked first, the total import of 695 million US dollars, a decrease of 0.05%, accounting for 29.72% of the total import; Seven categories of products two liters and five down, spinning machinery and weaving machinery continued to maintain growth, other major categories of chemical fiber machinery decline is still the largest, affected by downstream capacity growth slowdown, chemical fiber machinery imports decreased significantly.
From January to December 2024, the main countries and regions of textile machinery imports are Japan, Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland, and the trade volume of the top five imports is 1.897 billion US dollars, a decrease of 23.61%, accounting for 81.08% of the total imports. Japan continues to maintain the top import country and region, but the amount declined year-on-year. Imports from France increased by 20.62% year-on-year, mainly due to the sharp increase in the amount of imported auxiliary devices and spare parts and printing and dyeing finishing machinery, which is the only country in the top five countries with a year-on-year increase in the amount of imports.
Textile machinery export situation
From January to December 2024, China exported 4.686 billion US dollars of textile machinery to 202 countries and regions, an increase of 3.31%. Since October, the export amount has continued to increase year-on-year, and the growth rate has been increasing.
From January to December 2024, the Customs statistics of textile machinery exports are divided into categories, and the export value of knitting machinery is 1.449 billion US dollars, an increase of 21.31%, accounting for 30.93%, ranking first, and the seven categories of products are three up and four down, among which the decline of spinning machinery is more obvious, and the export of knitting machinery, printing and dyeing finishing machinery and nonwoven machinery has achieved positive growth.
From January to December 2024, the total amount of exports to India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Turkey accounted for 56.56% of the total exports, an increase of 9.70%, which is the main country and region of China's textile machinery exports.
Industry form outlook
Looking ahead to 2025, the global economic recovery process will still face multiple tests. Although the global inflation pressure is slowing down, but the geopolitical conflict intensified, trade protectionism continues to rise, emerging market demand fluctuations and other external risks are still prominent, global supply chain reconstruction and the United States and Europe "nearshore" "back to shore" policy or further squeeze the space of China's textile industry, tariff barriers may accelerate the industry chain relocation pressure. In addition, problems such as insufficient domestic demand, homogenized competition, the contraction of orders of some small and medium-sized enterprises and fluctuations in raw material prices still restrict the repair of industry profitability.
However, the long-term fundamentals of China's economy have not changed, and the coordinated efforts of macro policies have injected certainty into the industry. With the deepening of the "four additional forces" policy of the National Development and Reform Commission, the policy dividend will continue to be transformed into the momentum of industry development. The Central Economic Work Conference held at the end of 2024 made it clear that the precise coordination of the implementation of "more active fiscal policy + moderately loose monetary policy" in 2025 will activate the vitality of the super-large-scale market, and leading indicators such as the recovery of manufacturing PMI volatility and the steady growth of industrial added value have released the signal of economic recovery, and the effect of the "two new" and "two double" policies has deepened. Textile machinery intelligent transformation and green upgrading demand is expected to accelerate the release. In terms of technological innovation, the deep integration of artificial intelligence, industrial Internet and new material research and development will promote the jump in the level of equipment intelligence, and deepen the application of low-carbon cycle technology to further consolidate international competitiveness. In terms of the international market layout, enterprises are expanding into emerging markets through the "Belt and Road" and "three global initiatives", and are gradually building a diversified export pattern to effectively hedge the risk of shrinking traditional markets.
In conclusion, in 2025, although the textile machinery industry is facing a complex and changing external environment, relying on policy escort, domestic demand resilience and innovation-driven, the industry will continue to transform to high-end, intelligent and green direction, on the one hand, the global industrial chain reconstruction, bringing the practice and process of the coordinated development of the textile machinery industry at home and abroad accelerate. On the other hand, the new demand of the textile market in China and neighboring countries and regions will open another window to the textile machinery industry and complete its own transformation and upgrading. The basic plate of high-quality development of the textile machinery industry is still stable, and the space for the development of the industry is still broad.