In the year of 2012, computer flat knitting machine manufacturers generally felt pressure from management, and the majority of the enterprises suffered different degrees of profit decline. This is in sharp contrast to the hot sales of computer flat knitting machine a few years ago. Since the year of 2000, more than 80% of the enterprises of the sweater industry have been considering that the market competitiveness could only come from the possess of computer flat knitting machine, therefore, the machine welcomed an unexpected sales peak. However, it is this short period of overheating that has brought a lot of trouble to the healthy development of the whole industry. At present, many industry insiders believe that there is still market potential demand for computer flat knitting machine, but the whole market rebound remains to be seen.

Influenced by the high inventories and underemployment from downstream industry, the computer flat knitting machine manufacturers generally felt increased pressures on the operation as well as the net profit decline in 2012. In the four quarter last year, some computer flat knitting machine production enterprises saw somewhat positive signs, but whether the industry’s major trend is recovering, and whether this kind of growth trend is sustainable remains to be further observed.

Transformation and upgrading become the mainstream

Although many sweater enterprises reflected that the enterprises could not enjoy a good market last year, there are still many enterprises expressed approval, because more and more enterprises took a good advantage of the industry adjustment period to achieve the transformation and upgrading through equipment replacement.

The cashmere industry in Qinghe County of Hebei Province saw a total export value of 630 million USD last year, accounting for 29.6% of the total export value of China’s domestic cashmere industry. Among them, the sales value of cashmere, cashmere yarn, and cashmere sweaters respectively accounted for 42%, 33% and 16% of the international market. It is learned that such a good performance that Qinghe cashmere industry has been able to achieve is mainly because the enterprises can actively carry out equipment replacement. For example, the cashmere processing enterprises introduced more than 110 NC woolen production lines from Italy and other countries, more than 1,700 computer flat knitting machine from Germany, Japan and other countries, which laid a solid foundation for the region’s well-performance.

Productivity surge plants hidden troubles

Many industry insiders believe that knitted sweater enterprises have already gone into the period of decline from a flourishing period, accompanied with the emergence of price dropping. The downturn of sweater industry also caused a sharp reduction in personnel. At the same time, now workers engaged in sweater manufacturing are facing serious aging problem, and the number of employees is decreasing year by year, while there is lack of new force supplement. It is in this context that computer flat knitting machine has become the focus of attention.

It is reported that over 80% enterprises of the sweater industry have been involved in the tide of computer flat knitting machine since 2000. The trend of using computer flat knitting machine to quota instead of manual quotation makes all the sweater industry believe that it is necessary to be equipped with computer flat knitting machine. Hand-driven flat knitting machine and semi-automatic production machinery manufacturers also feel it very necessary to produce computer flat knitting machine. Finally, more and more sweater manufacturers consider that only equipped with computer flat knitting machine, could they have real market competitiveness. Therefore, there comes the computer flat knitting machine peak.

On that basis, such confusion appeared: enterprises, whether they had something to do with computer flat knitting machine or not, went to the market for a business. Many of them were profitable; of course, most were those who lost money. When the heat of the market cooled down, some computer flat knitting machine and parts processing enterprises realized that the real victim of such disorderly competition was the whole industry. Many industry insiders claimed that the sharply dropped sales last year was greatly related to the rapid productivity surge of the whole industry, in addition to the international economic environment as well as fiber raw material price fluctuations.

No market survey conducted, no latest R & D done, only dreaming about investing today to profit tomorrow. Few enterprises considered where they would go decades later, and what they prefer to do is to follow anything new, at the end, the market will be temporarily surplus. 

A sharp contrast with it is German Stoll and other international well-known companies who do not pursue the quantity of the product, but always put the product quality in the first place. This is also a question for domestic computer flat knitting machine manufacturers to seriously consider.

Three problems hinder the development

Flat knitting machine is one of the important technologies in the knitting industry. At present, people engaged in the machine are more than 300,000. After several years of development, the flat knitting machine equipment in the knitting industry has seen significant progresses as well as gradual improvement from quantity to quality. In spite of the rapid development of computer flat knitting machine, the mention of domestic ones would cause a lot of people’s anger, unfortunate and disappointing. Generally speaking, there are three major problems hindering the healthy development of the industry.

First of all, computer flat knitting machine enterprises are short of development talents, and recruitment mainly depends on undermining others. Main causes of this talent shortage include: the factories do not pay attention to personnel training, but only pursuit immediate interests; the development scale of domestic flat knitting machine goes so fast that professional and technical personnel are not enough in proportion to the scale; despite the lack of domestic talents as well as the poor foundation, many professionals choose to stay abroad.

Secondly, the products have been put to the market although they are not mature enough just in the pursuit of immediate interests. At present, many users reflect that domestic computer flat knitting machine has such problems as “unstable transfer, easily inappropriate position of presser, serious needle loss, and unstable system”. Some manufacturers of computer flat knitting machine parts said that currently the domestic computer flat knitting machine production scale is too large so that they have been outrun parts supplies. Many cast parts have to be put to lathes before they cool down, it is easy to make parts deformed in such a way.

Finally, the domestic computer flat knitting machine enterprises have taken lower price as their competitive advantage. But, can manufacturers really profit the price chaos? In order to guarantee profits, many companies can only cut down costs of raw material, which is really as a Chinese old saying “You get what you pay for, no good cheap goods”. In fact, what sweaters care about is the quality gap among them, but not the little bit of money every machine saves for them.