Domestic fibre supply has increased in recent years because local enterprises have expanded production to improve the competitiveness of garment products.

The Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association (Vitas) announced that the domestic enterprises have many large projects to expand fibre production for the manufacturing of local garments and to reduce imports of fibre, reported Dau tu (Vietnam Investment Review) newspaper.

Last year, Nha Trang Textile and Garment Joint Stock Company, with a total charter capital of 185 billion VND (8.8 million USD), invested 80 billion VND (3.8 million USD) in fibre production with a capacity of 16,000 tonnes a year, said company chairman Pham Xuan Trinh.

The investment also helped the company gain revenue of 1.304 trillion VND (62 million USD) last year, 100 billion VND (4.76 million USD) higher than the previous year.

Pre-tax profit reached 45 billion VND (2.1 million USD), an increase of 5 billion VND (238,000 USD) against the previous year, he noted.

This month, the Century Synthetic Fibre Corporation started a fibre producing project in Trang Bang Industrial Zone, Tay Ninh province, with a total investment of 33.9 million USD.

Dang Trieu Hoa, chairman of the company, stated that the company planned to put the factory into operation from the third quarter of 2015, and the factory will run its full capacity of 50,000 tonnes of draw textured yarn (soi xo dai) each year from the first quarter of 2016.

The factory would help the company have enough fibre products to take advantage of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement.
This would also enable it to co-operate with other partners to expand production to the fields of textile dyeing, completing its supply chain, Hoa noted.

Phu Nam Fibre Joint Stock Company located in Thua Thien Hue province said this year that the company would continue investment to increase its capacity by more than 30,000 units of whorl.

Last year, the company had 30,000 whorls to supply fibre for domestic and foreign markets.

Vitas noted that the increase in local fibre products had reduced imports and even led to exports.

The association added that exports of material and sub-material products of Vietnam, mainly including fibre, increased to 2 billion USD last year. In the first four months of this year, exports reached 800 million USD.

Each year, local textile enterprises imported fibre worth 1.3 billion USD from Taiwan, the Republic of Korea and India for home consumption.

Meanwhile, the local textile and garment industry had 3,700 enterprises, including about 630 textile enterprises supplying 40 percent of the local demand of fibre.

Therefore, the local fibre market was still a potential market for foreign firms, the association claimed.-VNA