Lyocell becoming widely known when high cotton price not beneficial to VSF

Although cotton price has been high since last year and spinners have suffered huge losses, there is not much demand transferring from cotton to rayon products since the spinners prefer to cut production, covert to high-count yarn or polyester blended yarn. The price of cotton is still high after several months and spinners who continue to suffer heavy losses have finally made a new choice—lyocell.

The first and the most important reason is price. Lyocell is 2,000yuan/mt higher than VSF, but there is still a considerable price gap of 6,000-7,000yuan/mt with cotton at 22,000yuan/mt. As cellulose fiber, the property of cotton, lyocell and VSF is close to each other, so the processing and quality of the product will not be affected by adding less lyocell in blended yarns. Compared with VSF, the most obvious advantage of lyocell is strength.

The wider application in downstream sector will definitely improve the recognition of the fiber and is beneficial to long-term development, but it is not so friendly to spinners who are using lyocell, especially pure-spun yarn mills because yarn price is difficult to follow up when raw materials have gained ground by 2,000yuan/mt, and the profit has been narrowed by more than 1,000yuan/mt.

Even if the price of lyocell has increased significantly, the producers are still under the pressure of suffering losses, but since there is certain recognition on the market, there is promising prospect in the future.