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The industrial background
The Lancashire textile industry covers
(1) the spinning, weaving and finishing of cotton;
of short-staple man-made fibros; and of mixtures of these two;
(ii) the weaving and finishing of man-made continuous
filament yarn
The spinning and weaving of cotton has been in almost continuous
decline for fifty years, first because of the loss of export
markets and, later, because of the growth of competition from duty-free imports from the Commonwealth and, more recently, from
woven man-made fibres and from knitted etc. products, whose share
of the market has risen from 15 per cent to 30 per cent between
1958 and 1968. Annex 2 shows that the production of spun and
filament cloth has fallen from 2,220 m. sq. yda, in 1958 (the year
preceding the Cotton Industry Act, 1959) to 1,445 m. sq. yds. în
1968. Within the total the production of cotton cloth fell by half
The Textile Council's forecast is that, even if the import-export
balance improves by 200 m. sq. yds., production of spun and
filament cloth mill remain at about this level between now and ·
1975, but that the share of cotton within the total will continue
to decline. Employment in the industry is expected to fall by
55,000 to approximately 70,000. The number of mills is likewise
expected to fall by some two-thirds, if labour and machine
productivity increase as rapidly as expected.
The growth in
consumption has been and will continue to be concentrated in knitte
etc. products, whose phase of the market is expected to rise to
43 per cent by 1975 from the present figure of 30 per cent.
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