Bangladesh has identified Australia and New Zealand as alternative markets to boost exports of its Carpet Backing Cloth (CBC).
CBC is made of jute and is exclusively used in making of both woven and tufted carpets. It is used as base or backing material for the carpets.
Recently, a Bangladesh Government delegation led by Md. Ashraful Moqbul, Secretary of the Ministry of Textiles and Jute (MoTJ), paid a visit to Australia and New Zealand to explore possibility of increasing CBC exports to these countries.
The team held discussions with various importers in New Zealand’s Auckland city and in Australian cities of Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney. The delegates also visited several carpet manufacturing units in these cities.
Speaking to fibre2fashion, Md. Ashraful Moqbul, Secretary, MoTJ, said, “We had some business discussions with importers in Australia and New Zealand during our visit last month.”
The team found that most carpet producers now use synthetic CBC and only a few of them still use jute CBC.
“We proposed the jute CBC users to buy their CBC from Bangladesh. In turn, they asked for competitive prices, on time delivery and good quality products. We retuned with a sample order in hand,” informs Mr. Moqbul.
If Bangladesh is able to bag more orders of CBC from Australia and New Zealand, it will definitely benefit the Bangladeshi industry because both the BJMC mills and the public sector mills are producing CBC alone.
“Since there are not enough markets for CBC, Bangladeshi mills are in search of new markets where they can export their products. We see Australia to be a good destination for exporting CBC from Bangladesh,” the MoTJ Secretary mentions.
Explaining the reason for Bangladeshi CBC exports going down in recent times, he says, “So far, most of the CBC from Bangladesh was destined to the US market. But now, the carpet producers in the US have reduced the use of jute and are mostly depending on the synthetic CBC. Hence, our exports to the US market have gone down.”
Continuing further, he says, “Moreover, CBC exports to the Middle East market viz. Libya, Sudan, Iran etc. are also witnessing a downtrend.”
Fibre2fashion News Desk - India
