EU's New Regulation Has Serious Impact On Shaoxing Textile And Garment Industry

The EU has issued a new regulation recently. In the REACH regulations, anyone who has been listed as a high standard of concern (SVHC) is required to report to the EU chemicals authority before June 1st of this year. This is no doubt in the Shaoxing textile and clothing Export enterprises quietly built up a trade barrier before.

　　 REACH regulation

Impact on textile and clothing exports

It is understood that the REACH regulations are entitled "chemical registration, assessment, licensing and restriction regulations". At the end of 2008, REACH issued the first list of 15 highly concerned substances list SVHC, of which 13 were related to textiles. This year, 8 new substances of high concern have been added.

According to the analysis, the impact of REACH regulations is mainly in three aspects: first, the cost of testing and testing of chemicals in textiles and the price of qualified chemicals are greatly increased, and the direct cost of export commodities is increased; two, more stringent and strict requirements and restrictive measures are put forward for chemicals used in textile production; three, the REACH regulations protect the interests of importers from law, and greatly increase the difficulty of textile and clothing exporting to the European Union.

EU market is indispensable

"The EU is Shaoxing's second largest export market." County Business Bureau official said. According to statistics, Shaoxing exported $1 billion to the EU last year, accounting for 12.5% of total exports. In 1-2 months this year, the county exported 168 million US dollars to the European Union. The EU market is also a base for textile enterprises to create high value added exports. The profit margin is generally 2 to 3 percentage points higher than other markets.

"For Shaoxing textile exporting enterprises, the EU market is indispensable." County Business Bureau official said. However, from the perspective of export market growth, our county's textile and clothing exports gradually showed weak growth. Last year the growth rate was 22.5%, which was nearly 10 percentage points below the average level of the whole county, while the growth rate of 1-2 this year was only 5.3%, which was 1 times lower than the average level of the whole county. "From the raw material processing to the finished products, the textile industry inevitably contains some chemicals. In the short term, REACH regulations will bring certain impact to textile and garment enterprises. People in the industry say.

Our county enterprises react passively to this.

At present, many enterprises have actively tested the way to ensure that products meet the requirements of the EU REACH regulations. as Binhai Industrial Area Shu Mei knitted in July last year invested 100 thousand yuan, imported testing instruments from abroad, and set up a testing center to meet the high standard requirements for fabrics, environmental protection and other aspects of clothing brands in Europe and the United States, especially in the European Union market, to ensure that the fabric indicators meet international requirements and to change more environmentally friendly and comfortable.

However, at present, most enterprises in Shaoxing do not attach enough importance to REACH regulations, and even a considerable number of enterprises have never heard of REACH regulations. There are still a large number of enterprises in our county to conduct passive tests. Generally, tests are arranged only when customers have mandatory requirements.

According to the experts, as a textile and garment enterprise, we need to keep abreast of the REACH regulations, grasp the relevant parts of the textile and garment enterprises, and penetrate into the production process, control the product quality from the source to meet the requirements of REACH regulations, so as to change the passive into the initiative.