Swiss textile machinery exports hampered by strong CHF
Not surprisingly, the strong CHF is making more and more inroad to lessen Swiss exports. In the textile machinery sector TextileFuture reported on a marked shed of employees of Rieter (Spinning Systems) at its manufacturing site in Winterthur. One of the reasons was exactly the strong CHF. It is noteworthy that the results of parliamentary elections of October 18, 2015 reflect the fear of common Swiss people to lose their job and that many industrial sectors will be outsourced to less costly countries and regions. And as the experience in clothing, textiles and textile machinery proves, such outsourced sectors do never come back to its country of origin. There is a lot of effort on very high political and economic level necessary to have some sectors coming back to home base, as we are witnessing in the U.S.A.
Now let us come back to Swiss exports in September. Total Swiss exports amounted to CHF 49202 million or 2680 million or 5 % less and also the pricing level dropped by 7 %. The drop in exports is due to less demand from Asia and Europe because these regions are very price sensitive and the high flying Swiss Franc made Swiss manufacturers less competitive. There are experts believing that this situation will be even more distinctive in the last quarter of 2015. On the other hand general exports to the U.S. increased four percent thanks to higher exports of pharmaceutical items, also Oceania showed a slight increase of one percent, according to the Swiss Customs Officials. Asia shows a decline of 8 %, among China with -14 % and Hong Kong -13 % and South Korea – depending on China’s demand – dropped by 18 %. Also UAE ordered 11 % less, the EU -5 % and the reminder of Europe -6 %, Africa -7 %. Exports to Russia dropped by 25 % and to Spain – 18 %, Germany -8 %, Italy -6 % and France -5 %. On the other hand orders from Great Britain showed an increase of 25 %, in contrast Latin America decreased by 5 %, Brazil and Mexico declined also -5 %.
Total Swiss imports sank in the third quarter by 10.1 % to CHF to 39.8 billion or -2.9 %, and prices declined by 7.4 %. All figures shown in this feature are based on real terms.
Now the textile relevant figures: Textile, clothing and footwear exports in September amounted to CHF 261 million or an increase of 5.5 % and from January to September 2015 exports totalled CHF 2327 million, an increase of 5.5 %. Looking at the third quarter such exports totalled CHF 767 million or an increase of 7.5 %. In contrast, textile machinery exports in September 2015 amounted to CHF 79 million or -46.8 %. From January to September such exports amounted to CHF 805 million -18.5 %. The exports in the third quarter amounted to CHF 255 million or in real terms -31.4 %.
Clothing and footwear imports in September amounted to CHF 658 million (-6.4 %) and from January to September to CHF 5081 million (-1.2 %) and in the third quarter to CHF 1921 million (-4.1 %).