Employees were working in Guangdong Esquel Textiles Co., Ltd. (Foshan Daily/ Li Hanyan)

“Since the beginning of this year, we have received too many orders.” 2017 annual member conference of Foshan Textile and Garments Industry Association (FTGIA) was held on March 10th. Many enterprises said that thanks to the early and good work of environmental protection in Foshan textile and garment industry, Foshan enterprises have an obvious increase of orders in the period of environmental protection storm.

Liu Bisheng, the president of FTGIA and the board chairman of Foshan Antoni Knitting Co., Ltd., introduced that thanks to cross-border e-commerce, the export in Foshan textile and garment industry increased 18.95% last year. “We did a research among Foshan textile and garment enterprises since the beginning of this year. Most companies think that the market will turn better this year, especially the second half of the year.” Liu said.

Liu thought that because the early work of environmental protection was well implemented, Foshan textile and garment enterprises won development opportunities under the circumstances of improved environmental standards.

“Since January, our orders have increased by 20%. It is a great beginning of the year.” Lu Mingkeng, the board chairman of Foshan Xinguang Knitting Co., Ltd. noted that with the emphasis of environmental protection, clients are more willing to place orders to enterprises which complied with environmental protection requirements.

“We have too many orders to finish at the beginning of this year.” Zhou Qiusheng, the deputy general manager of Guangdong Esquel Textiles Co., Ltd. said. Due to the quality assurance of its products and improvement of production efficiency, Esquel has more overseas orders.” Zhou thought that textile industry was facing a shuffle at present, which was a market process of “the strong get stronger while the weak are eliminated”. Enterprises that focused on technology innovation, product quality and environmental protection can have bigger opportunities.

The increase of orders also brings new challenges to textile industry in Foshan. “After expanding production, there is a problem of labor shortage.” Lu said. Last year, Xinguang Knitting invested several million yuan to introduce automatic equipment and promote automatic production lines, reducing dependence on human labor. According to statistics, since 2016, only textile enterprises in Xiqiao have purchased more than 1,000 advanced weaving machines. Meanwhile, they reinforce technology transformation and equipment upgrading, further improving the production efficiency of enterprises.

(Arrietty)