Romania’s textiles industry is strongly affected by slumping global demand. In less than one year, the textiles industry lost 53,000 jobs, and the staff size of textiles factories has shrunk to some hundreds or just tens of employees, compared with thousands of people customarily working with the production facilities of such factories four-five years ago.
For example, four factories of the northeastern town of Roman, which used to employ a staff of between 50 and 1,000 halted business in the past four-five months. Among them is the Comoconf shirt maker, which main business client was Dolce&Gabbana, and Gruppo Ibis manufacturer of clothing items, according to news sources from the local textiles market.
CEO Sorin Chiriac of the Caremil Roman textiles manufacturer, which bet high on the domestic market for which it created its own brand, Sense, to cover export losses says that in both October and November business orders plummeted by 50%. He says that besides the company’s three large sections, the company is in business relations with five-six smaller, to which it could not distribute anything to work on.
Because of labour migration to other sectors, the company currently has only 370 employees, 60 of whom are working in the retail business of the company, down from 520 three years ago.
The newest big problem facing the local players in the textiles industry is the shortage of export orders. While in the past years competition from Asian companies, the depreciation of the single European currency and labour migration used to be the main obstacles to the development of local textiles manufacturers, slumping export demand from world customers is the hardest blow to all the textiles players now.
“The effect is felt strongly in our field of expertise because we are exporters and orders no longer come in. Small and medium-sized enterprises can no longer pay back the loans they have taken out because of high interest rates, and that is why many of them will close down,” says Chair of the Federation of Employers’ Associations of the Light Industry (FEPAIUS) Maria Grapini.
Grapini says major changes have occurred in the textiles industry over the past months that generated a shrinking market. Although many companies are shedding staff now because of a lack of business orders, the effects will only be visible in January, when massive job cuts are expected, as redundancy procedures take time to complete.
The FEPAIUS official expects cuts by up to 20% in the pool of textiles workers. The worst affected will be the western counties of Bihor and Timis, the eastern county of Vaslui, the northeastern county of Botosani and the southern county of Prahova where production facilities will be closed sown. She says many of Romania’s thousand of micro-enterprises have already vanished in Romania.
In Bihor County, some 700 workers were laid off October-November, 500 of whom were textiles workers, according to data with the Bihor County Employment Agency.
“The times of factories employing thousands of workers are over. The collections we would make some year ago in thousands of copies are increasingly more varied. News patterns and designed are demanded, which requires another kind of factory management.
You have to divide the staff in small teams that takes care of one pattern, which in turns entails increasingly higher costs because each team requires a master. Many factories fail to cover their costs and close,” says Chair of the Romanian Association of Fashion and Design Liliana Turoiu Udrea.
Men’s wear manufacturers Secuiana has also switched 60% of its output to the local market and has all its business contracts covered thought next March. Oltul textiles maker last year closed down two of its five workshops for no longer being profitable.
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