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Manufacture of Textiles and Textile Products

August 2008

Photograph of a reel of cotton, a needle and a button

Introduction

Few industries are so evocative of a geographical area than textiles (and particularly cotton textiles) are of the "Lancashire" region. Built on the back of Lancastrians' inventions such as Richard Arkwright's water frame, James Hargreaves' "spinning jenny" and Samuel Crompton's "mule" the industry, or "King Cotton" as it was called in its heyday, introduced the factory system and was the basis of the county's early industrial growth and its rapid urbanisation. As recently as the 1880s about 80% of the world's cotton cloth exports came from Britain (and mainly from Lancashire) and the process of producing cotton goods became woven into the very fabric of the English language. Even the industry's protracted decline over the course of much of the 20th Century greatly imposed itself on the county as it searched for a new economic identity in the wake of successive waves of textile industry restructurings and downsizing.

Today the sector is defined to include the production of textiles proper as well as the manufacture of made-up textile articles, including wearing apparel. In addition, there are non-manufacturing sectors totally dependent on textiles and apparel manufacture – most notably wholesalers and retailers though these are outside the scope of this profile. The extent of the industry is wide ranging from the basic preparation and spinning of textile fibres (e.g. cotton, wool, flax, silk, jute, artificial fibres, etc.) through the weaving and knitting of these fibres into fabrics to a wide range of bleaching, dyeing, printing and other finishing processes. The sector includes the manufacture of made-up textile articles which as well as apparel include soft furnishings, canvas goods, sacks, etc. and an array of other household textiles, as well as the manufacture of carpets and rugs, cordage, rope, twine and netting, non-woven articles, lace, narrow fabrics, knitted and crocheted articles and a wide range of miscellaneous textiles from felt to specialised industrial and technical fabrics for demanding end users in such markets as automotive, aerospace, medical and civil engineering.

Employment

Despite its many decades of employment decline the Textiles and Textile Products industry, which represents the traditional core of consumer goods manufacture, is still an important economic force in Lancashire. In 2006 it employed some 6,100 people in about 300 separate establishments. In these terms it was a mid-ranking local manufacturing sector accounting for 6.2% of the manufacturing employee workforce (a share substantially above the 3.4% that the industry occupies in Great Britain), or 1.0% of all employee jobs in Lancashire. Whilst less so that formerly, it remains an important source of manufacturing jobs for women (who now comprise 41% of the local workforce) and for ethnic groups. About 90% of jobs are full-time, falling to 82% in the case of women (Table 1).

Reflecting its roots the industry is still widely dispersed across Lancashire though East Lancashire, the traditional centre of the cotton weaving industry, still accounts for more than two-thirds of the jobs with Blackburn, Pendle, Hyndburn, Rossendale and Burnley being the largest centres (Figure 1). In Blackburn, Hyndburn and Rossendale textile jobs still account for between 10-13% of the local manufacturing workforce and in all these districts' provides for between 2-3% of the total employee base. The distribution of these textile employee jobs by ward is shown in Table 2.

Bar chart showing the number of textiles and textile products employee jobs in each local authority in 2006 - see text for details Source ONS - Annual Business Inquiry
Figure 2 Textiles and Textile Products Jobs as a Percentage of All Employee Jobs, Lancashire Ward, 2006

Map showing the percentage of employee jobs that are in the textiles and textile products industry in each of Lancashire's wards in 2006 - see text for details Source ONS - Annual Business Inquiry

The days of the very large integrated textile manufacturing company employing many hundreds or even thousands of workers are long gone. The great local textile companies that once operated across the globe have either gone bankrupt or been taken private and most of their remaining business has long since moved its manufacturing off-shore to low cost production centres. Today the industry is composed mainly of small and medium-sized family-run firms (Table 2). Statistically the "average" company size is only about 20 employees though firms in textile manufacturing proper are generally larger and more capital intensive (average establishment size of 23 employees) than in the more labour intensive apparel firms (average establishment size 14 employees). Overall, small enterprises employing fewer than 25 people account for more than 81% of all firms in the industry, though account for less than a quarter of the workforce. Conversely the top 10 firms employing more than 100 people, who represent just 3% of the business stock, account for more than a third of the total workforce.

Photograph of Lappet Manufacturing Co. Ltd in Garstang Source (External) www.pollockandcochrane.com

Some of the larger and well known employers within the county include (External) Caprice Apparel Ltd , Blackburn, ladies' and children's wear, sportswear and leisurewear; (External) Cavalier Carpets Ltd , Blackburn, carpet manufacturers; (External) Cloverbrook Fabrics , Burnley, manufacturers of knitted and woven fabrics; (External) Hilden Manufacturing Co. Ltd , Oswaldtwistle, supplying quality linen products to all areas of the hospitality industry; (External) JB Broadley , Rawtenstall, manufacture of technical coated textiles; (External) James Thornber , long-established Clitheroe-based weavers of upholstery fabrics; (External) J Stott Workwear , Blackburn, manufacturers of specialist workwear for the healthcare and catering sectors; (External) Lappet Manufacturing Co. Ltd , Garstang, manufacturers of Saudi Arabian men's headshawls; (External) Panaz , Burnley designers and manufacturers of flame retardant fabrics; (External) Plumbs Ltd , Preston manufacturer and retailer of made-to-measure furniture covers; (External) Simon Jersey Ltd , Accrington, specialists in the design and supply of corporate wear uniforms; and (External) Trutex , well-known suppliers of boys' and girls' schoolwear and school sportswear. The general distribution of the Textile and Textile Product manufacturing establishments across Lancashire is illustrated in Figure 3.

Map showing how textiles and textiles products establishments are distributed over Lancashire - see text for details Source ONS - Annual Business Inquiry

Employment Trends

Photograph of weaving at Horrockses Mill, c.1900

At the zenith of its fortunes in the first quarter of the 20th Century the Lancashire region was the cotton capital of the world and the industry totally dominated the local economy. Even within the narrower geographical definition of modern day Lancashire the textile industry at this time employed more than a quarter of a million people and many other industries and services were embedded within it – notably coal mining, a substantial world class textile machinery and engineering sector and chemicals in the form of artificial fibres and of dyestuffs, pigments and inks for the finishing operations.

In many Lancashire manufacturing communities across the old cotton belt – particularly in the Preston area; those in the Calder Valley stretching from Blackburn through to Burnley, Nelson and Colne; and in Rossendale – the industry accounted for three-quarters and more of all local insured employment – a degree of economic dependency scarcely imaginable today. The key to the industry's phenomenal success had been its ability to capture and retain a large share of the world market. Indeed, for much of the 19th Century nine-tenths of the output of cotton cloth was exported and in its heyday the Lancashire cotton textile industry claimed to make cloth for the home market before breakfast on a Monday morning and for the world during the rest of the week.

Largely in response to a slump in exports in conditions of faltering world trade and to growing overseas competition when developing countries such as Japan discovered that making cotton was a simple and low cost way of industrialising, employment in the textile industry declined sharply. Job numbers fell to about 239,000 by 1929 and to 156,000 by 1939 following a wave of mergers and government intervention to encourage scrapping of excess equipment and to finance the modernisation of surviving mills. However, perhaps the most important factor in decisively breaking the dominating hold of the textile industry on the local economy, and via subsequent diversification, to its great benefit, was the Second World War. With the large scale transfer of workers to the war-time industries established in the County, allied to mobilisation for the armed forces, employment in textile manufacturing plummeted over the early 1940s and stood at less than 82,000 by 1945 or only slightly more than half its pre-war level.

Graph showing how the number of textiles and textile products jobs in Lancashire has changed from 1950 to 2006 - see text for details Source Ministry of Labour/ONS - ERII Employment Records

There was a short post-war boom in the industry which lasted until 1951 and which pushed employment back to 131,000 but thereafter the pattern was one of continued contraction and restructuring, particularly in the large cotton weaving sector based largely in East Lancashire. In 1959 Britain became a net importer of woven cotton fabrics; a year later imports of cotton yarn exceeded exports for the first time. By the early 1960s when manufacturing still employed more than half the insured population in Lancashire, textiles employed some 90,000 people. Between 1961 and 1971 employment in textiles fell by nearly a half and by a half again in the following decade – a loss of over 70,000 jobs over the space of 20 years. This was in spite of the fact that the multi-fibre arrangement had placed temporary limits on imports from low cost countries from the early 1970s. Symbolically "King Cotton" lost its premier industrial employment position in the County in1979. Over the past 25-years the industry has continued to contract steadily, if less precipitously, and by 2006 it employed just over 6,000 people. It is probable that there are very few geographical areas of such a size that have ever undergone the contraction of its single basic industry on such a scale as that experienced by the Lancashire cotton textiles and allied industry.

The pattern of broad sectoral employment changes within the industry since 1984 is shown in Table 4. A few of these trends have been blurred by some companies switching the focus of their main activities, for example, by moving away from textile production proper (i.e. spinning and weaving) to more specialised applications or into the making-up side of the business. More recently there has been a marked tendency towards out-sourcing manufacturing itself and concentrating on design and supply. However, it is clear that the major casualty, particularly over the 1980s and early 1990s was cotton-type weaving, with lesser job reductions in spinning, wearing apparel and knitted fabrics. More recently, sectors that had hitherto managed to more-or-less hold their own have also begun to see job reductions, most notably carpets and rugs and made-up textile articles, such as bedding and household furnishings. The only part of the industry that appears to have been able to sustain itself to some degree has been in the area of "miscellaneous textiles", a sector that includes many of the more technical, specialised and higher value added textile products, made of carbon, glass, aramid and other special or composite fibres, in addition to conventional textile fibres. More recently even parts of this sector have begun to face ever greater overseas competition. It was evident that post-1998 most sectors were beginning to feel the impact of the strength of sterling, high interest rates and globalisation trends, particularly the increased tendency amongst many UK retailers to simultaneously trim down their lists of suppliers and out-source their requirements to lower cost overseas producers. Between 1998 and 2006 the number of textile manufacturing units in Lancashire fell by 220 or by 42%.

Geographically, by far the largest decline in textile jobs over the 1984-2007 period was in Pendle which witnessed a reduction of 4,400 (-86%), Blackburn (-2,800 or -61%) and Burnley (-2,100 or -76%) mainly attributable to losses in the formerly large weaving sector, followed by Rossendale with the net loss of 2,000 jobs (-79%), mainly textile finishing related, and West Lancashire (-1,200 jobs) where the industry has now all but disappeared. Somewhat surprisingly, total jobs in textiles over the twenty years have remained virtually constant in both Preston and South Ribble although the numbers are not large.

General Characteristics

Textiles has always been a rather volatile sector. It is dependent on the health of end-use markets, growth in the overall economy and shifts in consumer demand and expenditure patterns. It is also subject to sudden surges of imports from new industries in developing countries and to the fluctuations in exchange rates that affect international trade. Trade within the industry has been regulated through the Multi-Fibre Agreement, which provided for a system of import quotas designed to protect the western textile industry from cheap imports. However, since January 2005 world trade in textiles has been freed of all these restrictions with the removal of quotas.

The most important textile sectors in Lancashire today are made-up textile articles (homewares) – including many well-known branded products, wearing apparel, miscellaneous "other" textiles, textile finishing, carpets and rugs and cotton-type weaving. Production within the industry has historically fluctuated with the business cycle but this has been less in evidence over recent years (Figure 5). In 2005 the local industry had turnover of close to £730m, down by more than a quarter from a decade earlier, and generated gross value added of nearly £264m, again about a quarter down over the decade, though in both instances this represented a lesser pace of reduction than experienced by the industry in the UK at large. The level of local output in 2005 represented 5.1% of Lancashire's manufacturing total. This was more than double the industry's share of UK production indicating the high degree of local specialization. A decade earlier textiles contributed nearly 10% of Lancashire's manufacturing output. Two-thirds of this production was generated in East Lancashire.

Graph showing how textiles and textile products gross value added, net capital expenditure, purchases and turnover have changed in Lancashire from 1995 to 2005 - see text for details Source ONS - Annual Business Inquiry

There is little doubt that the value of the textile industry's output has fallen off sharply since its last peak in 1988. This followed a quite extensive period over which the industry appeared to be performing reasonably well and with sufficient confidence to undertake some considerable new investment. Over much of the 1990s the Lancashire textile industry undertook net capital expenditure in the order of £35m per annum, equivalent to nearly £2,100 per head and well above its trend rate. This was a quarter greater than that achieved by the industry nationally. One of the effects of such sustained higher investment was an impressive long-term gain in labour productivity. Between 1995 and 2005 gross value added per head in the local industry increased by about 60% in real terms to stand at £36,700 – nearly a fifth higher than that being achieved within the industry nationally.

Despite this local achievement, it remains the fact however that the textile industry generally continues to have investment and productivity characteristics that are amongst the poorest of any manufacturing sector, a feature evident in the industry's payments of gross wages and salaries. In 2005 the Lancashire textile industry paid out gross wages and salaries to its workforce of about £150m per annum. In per capita terms, however, this amounted to just £20,700 per head – higher than in the industry nationally but still amongst the lowest of any of the broad manufacturing industry groupings.

Photograph of India Mill, Darwen, in its heyday Source Provided by the copyright holder for use in the (External) Cotton Town digitisation project. See also (External) The India Mill Centre .

The industry has done much to increase its adaptability to the needs of the market over the past 15-years or so. Hand-in-hand with concentration and downsizing there has been a strong trend away from commodity products and towards more speciality, innovative and higher value added products, including medical, technical, geo-technical, automotive, non-wovens and other industrial textiles as well as new made-up articles made from new fabrics and yarns. Such markets have a requirement for greater flexibility and technically higher specifications which show less price sensitivity and allow for differentiation strategies. This has helped to boost exports and reduced exposure to cheap overseas competition. Manufacturers have also increasingly concentrated on the service aspects of their operations, particularly in regard to shorter production runs and more timely deliveries, appropriate packaging and presentation and effective distribution. In some of the more advanced textile-related technologies and in the drift to sourcing there has also been a marked shift in the demand for labour towards skilled workers and highly trained professional managers with experience in marketing, supply chain relationships and distribution. This permanent movement towards up-grading adjustment is entailing a growing sophistication in technology, organisation, information systems and management, but it inevitably involves also, a continuing reduction in total employment opportunities.

In the more labour intensive apparel and making-up sectors automation has been less in evidence but modern technologies have been applied to some processes such as design and cutting and with emphasis on the organisation of production via the use of information technology allowing for the greater flexibility of production, reduced delivery times and the management of shorter and trial production runs to provide a quick market response. Even so, many manufacturers have increasingly moved towards transferring labour intensive parts of their production process to sub-contractors, often overseas, in order to save costs and to improve their overall competitiveness.

Despite the efficiency and quality gains achieved by the textile industry over the past couple of decades, it still faces a challenging future. Much of the industry exhibits the characteristics of a mature sector – weak growth, strong and global competition and a technology embodied in equipment that is widely available. The image of the industry remains tainted by its past and in absolute terms both productivity levels and wages and salaries per head remain among the lowest of all industrial sectors. Worst of all, competition from lower cost overseas countries is increasing and is exacerbated by the high level of concentration amongst UK retailers, a number of whom have themselves become more directly involved in manufacture as well as sales. The survival of the industry depends crucially on its ability to promote good design, branding and product differentiation, to carve out higher value niche markets and to adopt aggressive export promotion. The best of the industry, particularly in the industrial and technical textile sectors and up-market consumer goods is becoming more capital and technology intensive and its future looks reasonably secure but these gains are likely to continue to be bought at the expense of weaker sectors and a greatly reduced employment base.

Interesting Websites

(External) The Weavers Triangle A fascinating account of the early development and growth of the textile industry in Burnley alongside the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, including a wonderful selection of photographs.

(External) Spinning the Web The story of the cotton industry from its earliest beginnings across Lancashire and the North West of England, providing a showcase of some of the extensive collections held throughout the region's museums, archives and libraries.

(External) Cotton Town The story of the cotton industry and its role in the development of Blackburn with Darwen.

Helmshore Mills Textile Museum A presentation of the textile industry story set in two of Lancashire's original textile mills.

(External) Lancashire Textile Manufacturers' Association Trade body providing practical help and advice to its member companies and promoting the textile industry generally.

This page was compiled by Peter Kivell .

All enquiries from the media should be sent to Corporate.Communications@lancashire.gov.uk .

Any other questions about the content of this page may be sent to EconInfo@lancashire.gov.uk .

For all enquiries about the county council's services , contact the Customer Service Centre on 0845 0530000 (01772 530000) or at Enquiries@css.lancscc.gov.uk .

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