IMPRESSIONS from a Cross-section

Since the second half of 2010, dyes and auxiliaries industry has struggled with sluggish growth mostly due to insufficient market demand. The hiked cotton price strongly affected the utilization of dyeing mills and buyers didn’t want to keep enough stock level of goods with higher production cost. Moreover, global economy doesn’t seem to recover very soon. This will enhance the speed of global restructuring of dyestuff manufacturers and we will have less number of players with competitiveness both in quality and finance in the future.

During last 10 years, China has became a dominant country in manufacturing disperse dyes but their cost is getting higher due to more strict government environmental policy and higher living income of labors every year. India has been an important country both in intermediates and finished goods of reactive dyestuff but this country will take a further dominant position in reactive dyestuff because most of major European dyestuff companies decided to move their facilities to India to reduce high manufacturing cost in Europe. China and India used to be important mostly in dyestuff manufacturing but these countries will become more important in dyestuff business itself because they are not only key players in dyestuff production, they are also significant center of dyestuff consuming market.

For the further growth of dyestuff industry, it seems very difficult to expect breakthrough which can satisfy both higher performance and lower price compared to existing products. Instead, many of dyestuff companies will focus on developing modified or revised dyestuffs which can improve performance or environmental problems. Water and energy will be more important factors than any other for customers to consider and new dyestuffs or new dyeing process which can yield less waste water and less energy consumption will be favored more than before.

Dyeing houses started to attend what is sustainable instead of what is cheaper because more of retailers and brands' concern. Retailers and brands are looking for responsible partners to help them manage the supply chain so that the consumer enjoys a great fabric produced safely. They are not only concerned good quality with lower price but they consider more comprehensively “What is sustainable way? What is smart buy?” Dyestuff companies are also required to meet such kind of customer’s demand and they should be suppliers with compliance with numerous retailer/brand RSLs. Dyestuff suppliers would be required to provide sustainable solutions for textile production and only such kind of suppliers can survive in the future market.

OHYoung is one of the dyestuff companies with extensive lists of dyes approved by the leading organic textile schemes. Since it joined as ETAD member in 1995, many of its products have been approved for the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) by Control Union in 2008 and it is also certified as Bluesign system partner in 2011.

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