Australia : Depressed Economy Forces European Woollen Mills to Cut Back Shifts

The lack of orders has resulted the textile industry to continue struggling as consumer confidence is going down according to Australian Wool Innovation (AWI).

Chief economist Chris Wilcox says a depressed global economy and excess yarn stocks are forcing woollen mills in Europe to cut back shifts, and China has failed to come to the fore.

Even orders from Australian-based wool companies have fallen to an eight-year low, and plants are running at around 60 per cent of their processing capacity. "There are some smaller mills that have closed. But typically the reaction has been, as we saw with GH Michells two or three weeks ago, they've decided to remove one shift, and therefore reduce their capacity utilisation, so instead of doing three shifts a day, they are probably only doing or two shifts a day. And that I'd say would be fairly typical of many mills around the world."