Apparel and footwear accounts for about 9% of US airfreight imports and about 5% of US containerised imports by sea. Airfreight volumes range from about 40,000-60,000 tonnes a month, while imports by sea can be anywhere between 600,000 and 1 million tonnes a month. China is the single largest market, but growth has come from Vietnam, Cambodia, India and Bangladesh. Air has a share of roughly 6% of the weight and 18% of the value of shipments, but subject to large fluctuations and differences between market.
Historical Volume Trends
Historical Textile Imports into the US show a moderate upward growth trend, somewhat higher for air than for ocean (see Figure 1). China, Vietnam and Bangladesh are the three largest import countries overall, but on the airfreight side, Italy takes prominent position with higher end products – primarily footwear and sunglasses.
Ocean volumes tend to peak around August every year, while airfreight volumes peak in November and drop in January and February. The maritime peak is earlier due to the typical pre-Christmas inventory build-up. 2020 and 2021 saw spikes in air freight traffic of apparel. In 2020 this was due to a spike in shipments of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) from China. The 2021 spike was driven by a surge of shipments from Vietnam.
Figure 2 shows an overview of apparel and footwear imports from China through to October 2022, while Figure 3 shows the same series for Vietnam. While Chinese growth has been flat, Vietnam has shown strong performance. Part of this is due to ongoing trade issues with China, but the main driver has been a diversification of sourcing and a shift to lower cost countries.
Air Share of Apparel and Footwear imports
Over time the share of apparel and footwear imports has stayed fairly constant but does fluctuate substantially throughout the year. Air has a share of roughly 6% of the weight and 18% of the value of shipments, but subject to large fluctuations and differences between market. Generally, the peak season will see a higher air share than other times of the year. The spike in 2020 (see Figure 4) is a consequence of PPE shipments.
The air share varies by market – most Asian markets have a low air share across product groups, while the air share of imports from Europe is much higher. For example, the air share of products from Italy and France is around 75% of weight and over 90% of the value of products shipped from those markets (See Figure 5). Despite the already high share of products by air, the share has been further increasing. Other markets have seen a downward trend in air share – despite container shipping rates being at an all-time high in 2021 and 2022.
On a product level the share moved by air also fluctuates strongly. Figure 6 provides an overview of monthly imports of footwear between Jan 2013 and Oct 2022. While the overall trend has been an increase in air share of value and weight, overall numbers have fluctuated between two and six percent of total volumes.
There has been some discussion recently about a shift to air as well as back to ocean. However, we find that overall in the apparel and footwear business there is no discernible trend in either direction.
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