Factory worker Wu Suqing hunches over a machine knitting a green cashmere sweater bound for a department store in China where demand for the luxury wool is growing even as Western sales shrink.
Surrounded by towering piles of brightly colored pullovers, Wu and dozens of workers at a factory in northern China churn out more than 100,000 sweaters a year that retail in Beijing and Shanghai for hundreds of dollars each.
“At the beginning I was tired, but now I’m used to it,” Wu said above the clamor of knitting machines in a dingy building in Ordos in northern China’s Inner Mongolia, where she works 11 hours a day.
China is the world’s largest producer of cashmere, churning out 75 to 80 percent of the global supply — worth an estimated 5 billion to 6 billion yuan (US$770 million to US$924 million) per year.
This “soft gold” or “diamond fiber,” as highly prized cashmere is known in the industry, has traditionally been exported to affluent overseas markets, but China’s growing taste for luxury products is changing that.
High-altitude northern and western China are ideal for producing the cloud-like wool. Their cold, dry winters cause the long-haired goats scattered to grow rich coats to keep the animals warm.
The soft fiber is spun into yarn and then knitted into sweaters, scarves and shawls sold by luxury brands such as Hermes and Eric Bompard in Paris, New York and Sydney.
More than half of the country’s cashmere clothing and accessories are still exported, but are finding a growing market in increasingly affluent Chinese cities.
“It is easy for a Chinese person to buy a cashmere sweater now. People are much richer than before,” said Zhang Quanxiang, vice director of the China Livestock Marketing Association’s cashmere department.
The number of Chinese-made cashmere sweaters exported last year fell to 12 million, down 33 percent 2007, as the financial crisis hit US and European buyers, said Zhang, former vice president of China’s largest cashmere producer, Ordos Group.
However, he adds that the growing Chinese market has helped offset that.
Raw cashmere prices have nearly doubled in recent years because of the Chinese demand, fewer goats following recent bitterly cold winters and a ban on grazing the sharp-hooved animals on open land in Inner Mongolia to prevent soil erosion.
The rising prices have been life-changing for herders such as Meng Lounu, 77, whose family lives in a village on the edge of the Gobi, where they raise hundreds of goats in large earthen-floor pens.
The family earns one million yuan each year selling cashmere to factories in Ordos. Recently, they have been able to buy a new pick-up truck and build several block-shaped cement houses for family members.
“Our standard of living gets better and better,” Meng said, herding dozens of long-horned goats around a yard strewn with dung and straw. “Before, our life was bad, but now it’s great. We can eat as much as we want — we make more and more money.”
China is the world’s fastest-growing market for luxury goods and is forecast to be the biggest by 2015, according to consultancy PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
A woman shopper at a wholesale outlet in Ordos, where a 100 percent cashmere sweater sells for up to 2,000 yuan, said she liked the soft fiber because it was comfortable.
The picture is less rosy for China’s cashmere factories, whose profit margins have been eroded by the soaring wool prices and increasing competition from other Chinese manufacturers enticed by the growing market.
“The business is becoming more and more difficult,” said Yang Wang, the owner of a factory in Ordos, which makes about 100,000 sweaters a year, mainly for the China market. “Cashmere factories are popping up everywhere in China. And there are more than 10 factories of the same size in Ordos.”
While Wu Suqing may not be able to afford one of the beautiful sweaters she makes, she understands why people are prepared to pay the equivalent — or more — of her entire monthly salary for the luxuriant wool.
“It feels nice and is comfortable to wear,” she said, sitting on a steel chair piled with folded cloth as a cushion.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”