The German waste textiles market remains mired in a deep crisis. Among industry experts, the only debate is whether the current situation represents the most dramatic collapse of the past 50 years or "only” since the three-year slump in the waste textiles business in the late 1990s.
Enormous volumes of original collected stock as well as sorted goods are being held in storage, market participants told EUWID. Some sorting firms have completely filled their storage capacity and have reached or even exceeded the permitted levels.
On the markets in Africa, we "completely underestimated the Chinese competition" when it comes to both new and used clothing, concedes one market expert. And even Europe is currently being flooded with "absurdly cheap textiles" from omnipresent Chinese online retailers, a fact that is already becoming noticeable in the quality of the collected stock.
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