Yarn Expo — China's Yarn & Fibre Trade Fair

Every garment begins further up the chain, and Yarn Expo is the fair for that first link: a textile industry trade fair in China devoted to yarn and fibre. Spinners, fibre producers and the mills and knitters who buy from them meet here, alongside the CAD/CAM suppliers and trade publications that serve the yarn trade.

The expo takes place twice a year; its spring edition was held at the China World Trade Centre in Beijing. This profile records who organizes and sponsors it, what is exhibited and how to reach its office. Edition dates and venues are set by the organizers — confirm the current edition with them directly before planning a trip.

Organizers and Sponsor

Yarn Expo is organized by a coalition that maps the Chinese yarn industry itself: Messe Frankfurt (HK) Ltd; the Sub-Council of Textile Industry, CCPIT; the China Cotton Textile Association; the China Wool Textile Association; the China Chemical Fiber Association; the China Bast & Leaf Fibers Textiles Association; and the China Textile Information Centre. The sponsor is the China National Textile & Apparel Council.

Read the list as the show's floor plan in words. Each fibre family has its own national association at the table — cotton, wool, chemical (man-made) fibre, and the bast and leaf fibres such as linen and ramie — which is why a yarn fair organized this way can present the full fibre spectrum in one hall, from natural staples to filament and specialty yarns.

What Is Exhibited

The exhibits are yarn, fibre, CAD/CAM and publications. For the buyers who walk it — spinning mills selling forward, weaving and knitting mills buying raw material, and garment supply chains tracing where their fabrics begin — the value of the show is comparison: counts, blends, dyeing routes and prices from competing spinners, handled and discussed in person rather than from a shade card.

A yarn fair also sits one step before the fabric fairs in the sourcing calendar. The yarns committed to here become next season's cloth at fairs such as Intertextile Beijing, and then garments at CHIC — the three China profiles on Apparel Search follow that chain from fibre to finished clothing, and fibre-level decisions about blends and performance yarns are where a fabric's cost and hand feel are largely decided.

Contacting the Expo

The expo office telephone is 010-85229504 and its fax is 010-85229300; the contact named for the show is Mr. Lin Yinghua, and its email address is yarnexpo@ccpittex.com. The websites named for the expo are www.messefrankfurt.com.hk and www.yarn-expo.com; neither address responds reliably today — the Messe Frankfurt deep link returns an error and the expo's own domain fails to connect — so both are carried as plain text in References & Further Reading below rather than as links, and the telephone and email contacts above are the working route to the organizers.

As with every event in this directory, check directly with the trade show organizer for the most current information about an edition: times, dates and locations are subject to change.