Textile and apparel industry is a pillar industry and an important livelihood industry in Shandong Province. In order to strengthen and improve the competitive advantages of this industry, the local government of Shandong Province recently released the scheme for transformation and upgrading of its textile and apparel industry.

According to the Scheme, the prime business revenue of the provincial textile and apparel industry is expected to top CNY 1.9 trillion in 2017 and CNY 2.78 trillion in 2020, with average annual growth of 13.5%.

The Scheme also pointed out the path and key tasks for promoting transformation and upgrading of the industry, i.e. accelerate the step of developing apparel, printing & dyeing, new fiber and technical textiles industries; transform and upgrade cotton textile, wool textile and home-textile industries; develop machinery manufacturing industry to give hardware support to industry upgrading; strengthen construction of industry innovation platform and promote industry upgrading; develop industrial clusters and increase concentration of industry; promote profound integration of information technology with each production and management segment of enterprise; play emphasis on environment protection and low-carbon production, so as to realize sustainable development.

The scheme puts forward 6 measures for ensuring smooth progress of transformation and upgrading, which include improving information service capabilities of industry associations; improving money-raising environment of textile enterprises; support small- and medium-sized firms to develop specialized businesses to serve special market niche; give greater support to the development of printing& dyeing industry; accelerate the step of eliminating outdated capacities; and strengthen the construction of talent team.

To improve information service capabilities of industry associations, emphasis will be played on setting up various information service platforms, so as to provide various information to enterprises; meanwhile, efforts will be made to establishing and improving product, market and enterprise databases, commodity statistical system, market monitoring and warning system as well as database retrieval and analyzing system, so as to provide service to macro control and decision-making departments.

To improve the money-raising environment of textile enterprises, the government will coordinate financial organizations to include the textile and apparel industry in the list of industries enjoying financial support. It will give policy support to organizations involving in R&D and application of various regenerated, degradable, reclaimable and eco-friendly biomass materials and reutilization of waste textiles; give special fund support to aramid fiber industry chain as well as alginate fiber and chitin fiber projects; and provide priority support to the technical reform projects and construction and technical centers of those branded apparel and home-textiles products who have own intellectual property right and high market share.

To support small- and medium-sized enterprises to develop specialized businesses, the government will provide preferential policy to their technical reform projects; give policy and financial support to these enterprises when they buy domestic scientific achievements and patents; and offer financial support and tax exemption to textiles recycling and processing enterprises. To give greater support to the development of printing & dyeing industry, major efforts will be made to supporting the construction of public wastewater disposal facilities in the locations of textile printing & dyeing enterprises and in industrial parks. The Scheme asks local governments at each level will set up special fund to support wastewater and gas treatment of printing & dyeing industry.

To accelerate the step of eliminating outdated capacities, the printing & dyeing industry will eliminate production equipment with service life exceeding 15 years and cotton and chemical fiber fabric batch dyeing machines with dyeing ratio higher than 1:10; the chemical fiber industry will eliminate Model R531 viscose spinning machine, viscose staple production line with annual capacity under 20,000 tons, wet-method and DMF solvent-method polyurethane fiber production lines, semi-automatic polyester filament winding machine with spindle shorter than 900 mm and batch-wise conventional polyester fiber production capacity.

To strengthen the construction of talent team, efforts will be made to establishing and improving talent cultivating, introducing, mobility and evaluation mechanisms, with emphasis played on customized training of strategic entrepreneurs, pioneer talents and senior blue-collar workers.

Source: China Textile Leader Express