RAYON EXPORT TRADE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 24 October 1940, Page 4

RAYON EXPORT TRADE

BRITISH rayon manufacturers have now organised themselves into one of the country’s strongest export groups to secure for Great Britain a share in the colossal yearly export of nearly 250,000,000 square yards of rayon from the now isolated European countries to the rest of the world. Less than one-fifth of this total was exported from Europe in the form of actual piece goods: most of it went out as yarn, but, as each kilogram of yarn finally forms eleven square yards of cloth, the enormous total is an accurate estimate. Almost three-fifths of the trade was formerly held by Italy. The Netherlands did an important part of the remainder, shared by France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia in that order.

This great is now open to British and neutral competition, which in effect means to Britain, the United States and, most powerful of all, Japan, now, however, sufficiently occupied with her own troubles both economically and in regard to raw material. Far and away the biggest of the new markets is British India where the new cheap yarns which are now being specially produced in Great Britain will be much needed. In South America no less than 57,000,000 square yards of rayon cloth are being thrown open to competition. There are 37,000,000 yards to be replaced in Central America and Mexico; 6,000,000 yards in U.S.A. and Canada 25,000,000 yards in Africa (mainly in Egypt); 24,000,000 yards more in Australia despite the large trade already done there by Britain and Japan; and 18,000,000 yards in the Far East, half of it in the Dutch East Indies. The value of this former European outpost now handed over by Hitler to the outside world is round about £10,000,000, and the making of the rayon would employ more than 50,000. workers for a full year.