(Yicai Global) Oct. 13 -- China’s textile manufacturers are very busy, with staff at some plants even working through the recent eight-day national holiday to meet demand.

“We had just two days off during the National Day holiday, so as to catch up with orders,” an employee in the procurement department of a factory in Shandong province told Yicai Global.

China’s textile producers are seeing demand from Europe and North America picking up ahead of the major holidays at the end of this year, coupled with a backflow of some Indian orders to China due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Recent orders from overseas have slowly increased,” the employee said, adding that his plants’ vacancies in the first half were already filled.

A dyeing plant in Zhejiang province also issued a notice to staff before the holidays, stating that the factory would work as usual, with no time off during this year’s combined National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holidays that ran from Oct. 1 to 8.

Wang Fusheng, the head of production at a textile processing plant in Jiangsu province that has overseas transactions, told Yicai Global that the factory was working overtime during the holiday. Its employees basically had no rest.

“We were quite busy in September, as well,” Wang said, adding that some facilities had to work overtime and even launched emergency recruitment in late August, despite many staff working through the holidays.

Pivot to China

In addition to overtime to satisfy the usual year-end rush of orders, Yicai Global also learned that many Indian textile exporters could not ensure timely delivery of goods due to Covid-19, which also forced European and US retailers to shift work to China that should have been done in India.

India is the world’s top maker of cotton and white jute, and also the second-largest silk producer, making up 22 percent of global yarn production capacity. The textile industry accounts for about 15 percent of the country’s total export earnings.

India has logged over 7 million confirmed Covid-19 patients, with 108,334 deaths. The number of its confirmed cases is surpassed only by the United States, India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Oct. 11.

Among the ‘emergency’ and ‘out-sourcing’ orders transferred from India to China, those for towels and bed sheets were large, according to executives at factories that received them. They said the volume has forced them to schedule the deliveries for next May.

But Wang and other industry executives believe the general outlook for the sector is not bright this year, despite the current market recovery. The companies that can restore annual orders to 60 percent or 70 percent of previous years will outperform their peers, most of which have just half of their previous orders or less.

Total global orders will still be lower if the pandemic keeps spreading overseas, the industry insiders said, though some Chinese firms can get orders from abroad.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Peter Thomas