With a trade pact with China expected to take effect early next year, Taiwanese players in the textile industry could ride on the opportunity to enhance ties with their Chinese peers by touting their knowhow in technical and functional textiles, pundits said yesterday.
“The textile industry is in the middle of transformation. It is moving toward functional and technical textiles, or those that have added value,” said Bai Chi-chung (白志中), president of Taiwan Textile Research Institute (紡織產業綜合研究所).
“Taiwan has an early advantage over China on functional and technical textiles, which create more added value to the makers,” he told a forum on cross-strait industrial collaboration on fiber and textile.
Technical textiles are widely applied across many sectors, including the medical industry. Materials used in artificial blood vessels, suits for lab staffers at clean rooms, oral masks or even seat belts used in cars, are examples of technical textiles, Bai said.
Functional textiles refer to those that offer value-added features, such as clothing that has cold or heat protection, or is waterproof or blocks infrared radiation.
“This is what we have been telling the public in China. Textiles are no longer just clothes that you wear or the blankets that you sleep in,” said Gao Yong (高勇), vice president of China National Textile and Apparel Council (中國紡織工業協會). “Textiles are now part and parcel of people’s lives.”
China has ample supplies of low-cost raw materials with huge domestic demand that will prove lucrative to Taiwanese businesses, he said.
By joining hands, the cross-strait textile industry could improve quality control, promotion and marketing, research and development, and even make forays into global markets with own-brand offerings, the pundits said.
With the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China expected to take effect on Jan. 1, Bai said Taiwanese textile firms would then pay NT$95.6 million (US$3 million) in taxes to China, down from US$174.7 million last year.
Taiwanese sanitary napkin maker KNH Enterprise Co (康那香企業) is eying domestic demand in China by launching a slew of other products, including oral masks and wet towels, and has started to study textiles used in medical aspects.
The company, which moved into China in 1998, saw that country account for half of its NT$5.3 billion in sales last year, KNH chairman Tai Jung-chi (戴榮吉) said.
KNH aims to double its revenues to more than NT$10 billion “in the future,” with China taking up the main chunk of sales, he said.
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