Explore ideas, evidence and developments across the textile value chain.
33 articles · latest first · 1–24
Intelligencefree24 Feb 2017The WTiN Intelligence: Digital Textiles channel continues to provide insight into a unique and fast-moving industry that consistently changes and grows as key regional markets mature and newer markets start to develop. The latest round of data, which shows industry findings from 2017, continues to surprise, with higher-than-average growth rates and the start of some unusual trends being seen. The digital textile industry continued to grow globally through 2016, with machinery sales helping to push the market above 1.5 billion sq m of digitally printed fabric globally. The largest global markets of China, Italy and Turkey dominate, with steady growth rates seen in these large markets, despite a forecast of slowing growth, while other large markets such as the US and India continued to grow on a global scale.
Intelligence12 Dec 2016Early 2016 saw extremely high growth from smaller and non-traditional textile markets globally, following initial growth witnessed in 2015. The Middle East was no exception, with an increasing number of specialist distributors operating in the region supporting sales made at Turkish and Asian exhibitions.
As the digital textile industry goes through a period of change, with some of its major regional markets experiencing slowing growth. As both a level of maturity kicks in and companies also assess where their levels of current demand sit. We are seeing many new markets enter the spot light as manufactures of hardware and substrate companies alike look to maintain growth levels experienced over the previous years.
Intelligence1 Jul 2016Turkey continues to dominate news headlines through 2016 with mainly negative connotations, but the textile industry – in 2016, at least – is proving resilient. This is partly thanks to a more stable political climate than we have seen in previous years and an uplift in foreign investment, especially from Asian investors. The digital textile market in particular looks set to remain positive throughout 2016, following a strong performance in 2015, despite experiencing tougher market conditions than in past years and slower sales than some may have expected, particularly in a year that culminated in ITMA.
Intelligence10 Jun 2016The Direct to Garment (DTG) industry developed around 16 years ago in 2004, as a number of companies saw an opportunity based out of the already large and established garment screen-printing sector. This was limited to either expensive short runs, or more affordable high-volume output. At that time, a number of companies looked to adapt widely available Epson print-head technology intended for paper printing for textile applications. While we still see certain companies using this approach in the market today, the technology has quickly developed as the market has expanded. The companies involved in the industry and showing success are now using dedicated technology to bring higher quality and more reliable equipment to the market than ever before.
Intelligence2 Mar 2016Data gathered on 2015 machinery sales showed that, despite tough economic conditions in some of the digital textile sector’s key production markets, such as China, Italy, Turkey and further afield, growth remained strong. Output capacity from machinery sales increased by 26% globally, thanks to a strong second half-year in many Asian markets – China and India both proving key to the result.
Intelligence25 Jan 2016The US market continued to perform strongly during the first half of 2015, with growth rates of 20% compared to the market average of 15.6% helping to increase its position within the global market. Currently, digital textile capacity in the US sits at 5.6% of the global total, with further improvement expected in late 2015 and onwards as the market continues to expand. If we look at digital textile printing in the US as a whole, it is hard to ignore the success that Direct to Garment (DTG) printing has had within the US market and how far behind Roll 2 Roll (R2R) is in relation. Leading DTG printer manufacturers agree that at many levels the US market makes up between 40% and 50% of global sales for their companies – a long way in front of where any R2R company would place their market share in the US market.
Intelligence16 Dec 2015CREAX a worldwide leader in innovation consulting, recently provided WTiN Analytics with an overview of the latest patents filed globally for digital textile printing. The aim of this short project was to map the development of the state of the art digital textile printing market and try to gain a better understanding where innovation was coming from and which companies continue to drive technology in this market forward.
Intelligence16 Oct 2015Italy continues to hold its own at the forefront of digital textile printing and did so through early 2015 despite experiencing a number of years of extremely high growth and being an already well-established industry. While the first half of the year saw the numbers of new installations slow compared to both previous years and global averages, 50 new machines where still installed over the half. This helped push the output volume to over 62million sqm for the half, producing a like for like growth rate of 5%. This increase, while small, helped Italy remain the second most important market for digital textile printing globally, behind China and ahead of competing local markets such as Turkey and Spain, which continue to see higher growth.
Intelligence22 Sept 2015The Spanish digital textile market is set around a strong traditional Dyeing and Finishing industry, one of the leading sectors of the Spanish textiles industry with 32 large companies working within this area across Spain. Alongside this aspect that provides a strong foundation for high volume digital textile machinery sales, Spain also hosts some of the most innovative companies and brands who were quick to incorporate digital textile printing into their supply chains.
Intelligence21 Aug 2015The Pakistani digital textile market has seen strong and consistent growth over the last two years, driving the country to produce over 28 million sqm of digitally printed fabric in 2014. While the figure itself is not large in comparison to some of Pakistan’s neighbours, and only makes up 3% of global production, the growth since 2012 has been impressive.
Intelligence16 Jul 2015Turkey remains one of the largest digital textile markets globally thanks in part to its location close to Europe and relatively lower labour rates in comparison to its European neighbours. This factor, along with others, such as an extensive traditional textiles market, has helped it to produce 71 million sqm of digitally printed fabric annually, with a mixture of fabric types making up this volume.
Intelligence10 Jun 2015The Indian digital textile market has been moving at a fast pace in line with the overriding trend of the economy over the last 5 years. WTiN Market tracker data has highlighted this economy as not only having some of the highest growth rates in the digital textile market but also as being one of the largest, despite a relative slow start. India, with its huge textile industry, was an obvious opportunity for the quickly growing digital textile market but due to the sheer scale of its production needs digital textile had a less than auspicious start when compared to European markets. But more recently, the gradual increase in machine speeds and reducing costs of ink have certainly helped bring digital textile printing to the Indian market. The increasingly strict labour laws alongside stricter pollution and environmental controls in India have helped drive the market at a faster pace than would have been seen organically.
