Weston Manufacturing supports UK market with bigger discount despite of spunlace raw fiber price increase
Since June China’s raw fibers prices have been surging up like rockets. Until September 27, the price increased by 30% to RMB17,200 per ton. Months ago it was even less than RMB12000. The result is definite, Chinese spunlace manufacturers, who accounts for a big part of global spunlace nonwoven production, promote prices for their clients to get their extremely higher cost covered. Surely it will be headache for global wipe producers.
In UK, the problem is more remarkable. During China’s price going up, another event in UK happened dramatically. In June 23, 52% UK citizens voted to leave the EU, shocking the world and revealing a divided country. Surely ‘it is victory of freedom’. But in economy points, it raised concerns of many people. Things came quickly, GBP exchange rates against RMB dropped down to an ice point of 8.23 at July from 9.89 in earlier month. To make things worse, the new Premier May declared UK would have hard Brexit, the exchange rate continued to drop to 8.18, which made UK importers suffer.
When most spunlace exports choose to increase their prices to sustain their profit, Weston Manufacturing decided not do it in UK market to support them in weak GBP times.
Now Weston Manufacturing produces three main spunlace products and do trading in some other nonwoven wiping cloth. They are blend of viscose and polyester spunlace for kitchen wipes and food service wipes; the second one is 55% woodpulp 45% polyester spunlace for advanced linting free industrial cleaning fields including aircraft wipes, printer head auto blanket wash cloth, or surgical gown fabric after waterproof treatment; the last one is 50% woodpulp 50% polypropylene laminated spunlace for oil grease cleaning or healthcare wipes. All of these fabrics are for household cleaning wipes, industrial cleaning wipes, high-end cleaning rags.
Even facing great pressure of spunlace raw fibers price going up, for the old clients, Weston Manufacturing adjusted prices to be lower, offering discount to clients to offset their lost in weak GBP. And for new clients, its quotation for UK clients lowered 3% than market price.