19 November 2009, Wilmslow – According to a new report from
Textiles Intelligence called ‘World Markets for Textile Machinery, 2009: Part 3
- Knitted Fabric Manufacture’, 2008 was a poor year for the international
knitting machinery market as a whole. Global deliveries of single jersey and
double jersey circular knitting machinery to the world’s mills declined, as did
shipments of hand knitting and semi-automatic knitting machinery and shipments
of electronic flatbed knitting machinery. However, according to the report, global
shipments of electronic flatbed machinery were still the second highest on
record, following two consecutive years of strong growth.
Deliveries of circular knitting machinery fell at double
digit rates. Within the overall total, shipments of single jersey circular
knitting machinery fell by 11.3% while double jersey machinery deliveries
declined by as much as 31.3%. In both cases, falls were witnessed in almost all
regions. In fact, the only rise in acquisitions was in Africa, where purchases
of single jersey and double jersey machinery increased at double digit rates.
Elsewhere, shipments fell, and in most cases the falls were at double digit
rates. In terms of individual countries, shipments of single jersey and double
jersey machinery to the industries in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico
and the USA all fell at double digit rates. There was even a 33% fall in
deliveries of double jersey machinery to the industry in China, while
deliveries of single jersey circular knitting machinery to the Chinese industry
declined by 5.4%.
In the flat knitting sector, global shipments of hand
knitting and semiautomatic knitting machinery declined by 21.4%, while
electronic flatbed machinery deliveries fell by a lesser 6.7%. In the case of
hand knitting and semi-automatic flat knitting machinery, the drop was due
almost entirely to a 67% plunge in shipments to mills in China, although there
were also steep falls in shipments to the industries in Hong Kong, India, South
Korea and Thailand. By contrast, deliveries to Bangladeshi mills increased by
4.3% and their share of the global total rose to over 77%.
In the electronic flatbed knitting machinery market,
deliveries to the industry in China fell by 3,245 machines, which far exceeded
the 1,463 drop in global deliveries. Offsetting the fall in shipments to mills
in China, however, were increases in deliveries to the industries in Cambodia,
Hong Kong, Taiwan, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, among others. As a
result, global shipments of electronic flatbed machinery in 2008 were still the
second highest on record, following two consecutive years of strong growth.
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