Australian Wool Innovation targets Bangladesh, India and Vietnam in a bid to reduce reliance on China

Australian Wool Innovation is increasing its presence in Bangladesh after the country was touted as the “number one hotspot for sourcing potential over the next several decades”.

AWI’s emerging markets and India regional development manager Trudie Friedrich said the company increasing its presence in Bangladesh after the country was touted as the “number one hotspot for sourcing potential during the next several decades”.

India and Vietnam are also being targeted as emerging and growing markets, as AWI eyes reducing its reliance on China — which buys nearly 90 per cent of Australian wool exports at about 38,000 tonnes per year.

Bangladesh’s potential as a wool processor — for both knitting and spinning — was a strong focus for AWI.

Ms Friedrich said supply chain partners in the Southern Asian nation were showing enthusiasm for learning to work with wool and incorporating more of it in their product lines.

“The textile industry in Bangladesh wants to innovate and upskill to offer more technical garments to their customers, and this presents a good opportunity for Australian wool,” Ms Friedrich said.

“We will continue to support them there on a technical and knowledge level, as well as increasing overall awareness of Merino wool, and see the benefits in doing this as the textile industry continues to grow.”

AWI has a number of key projects in Bangladesh, which include an outreach to potential knitting and sweater supply chain partners to offer technical assistant in knitting wool.

The Woolmark Company is poised to launch a short wool staple trial with cotton spinners in coming months, to use wool in a cotton-spinning system to create wool/cotton blend yarns.

It is hoped this this will encourage cotton spinners to incorporate wool into their production lines.

Ms Friedrich said other projects included refining and updating AWI’s ‘Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka Sourcing Guide’ to include more suppliers from Bangladesh.

She said AWI staff planned to visit Bangladesh tradeshows, and the company would continue advertising in trade publications to increase awareness of The Woolmark Company and Merino wool in particular.

The company also plans to launch a targeted Woolmark Licensing campaign in Bangladesh to attract more licensees in the market.

Bangladesh has emerged as a serious garment manufacturing country during the past decade, with the country’s textile industry being the third largest apparel exporter in the world (after China and the EU).

It accounted for 6.4 per cent of world apparel exports in 2021.

A survey of global survey apparel chief purchasing officers that same year ranked Bangladesh as the number one sourcing potential during the next several years, with many big-name brands setting up sourcing offices there.

Bangladesh is a growing source for traditional wool knitwear for many big-name brands across the world that have established sourcing offices there.

Already recognising the steady growth of the Bangladesh textile sector and its potential for more wool manufacturing (especially knitwear), The Woolmark Company in 2020 began to look more closely and proactively at Bangladesh as an emerging market for wool.

Since then, the company has increased its reach there by holding several webinars for current and potential supply chain partners to help them see the benefits of working with Australian wool.