Executive summary
Europe plays an important role as silk converters and consumers in the global market. France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the United Kingdom are consumers and also leading converters of silk. They have dominated the fashion fabric and garment scene because they have excellent silk processing expertise and their silk products designed by top designers are all high-value. Recently, silk processing is rapidly shifting to silk producing countries in Asia and top fashion designers are also putting up their designing to Asia as well, hence, it provides a great opportunity for silk producing countries to enter to the EU market (Datta and Nanavaty, 2005). The dominant suppliers of imported silk in Europe are China and India, followed by emerging countries such as Vietnam and Brazil in the last few years. Statistical data from Eurostat shows that import value of silk fabric into EU from 2001-2010 is steady from approximately 191 million euro in 2001 to 214 million euro in 2010. Import value of final products of silk into EU from 2001-2010 are quite steady from approximately 249 million euro in 2001 to 285 million euro in 2010. Italy is the largest importer of silk fabric following by the UK and France. In 2010 Italy imported silk fabric valued 117.4 million euro while the UK and France imported silk fabric valued 30 million euro and 19.4 million euro respectively. ‘Quality’, ‘quality-price-ratio’, ‘volume’, and ‘consistency of supply of standard quality products’ are the main factors the importers and distributors use to select silk suppliers. ‘Quality’ of silk depends on the utility of materials to make final products. ‘Business relations’ and ‘communication’ are clearly relevant to their decision as well. The importers, distributors and processors prefer standard/uniform products in term of quality, colors, consistency, delivery time, etc. for modern weaving factories. In general European industrial weaving requires silk fabric with 130-140 cm width. Thai silk plays a marginal role in the EU market. Thai silk fabric is more promising than final products because it has its own weaving characteristics and can be identified amongst other sources (however, it has a small share, only 2% of the EU total imports of fabric in 2009). Therefore, it can be mainly used for dresses, accessories (scarves, foulards, etc.) and bridal dress or for home decorations such as curtains, pillow and table covers. Nonetheless Thai silk has to
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