October 27, 2025 | 03:12 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Spools of yarn hang from rows of spinning machines. A loud mechanical hum fills the air as workers move busily, though their numbers have fallen by more than half. Andi, 41, the production manager of a filament yarn factory in Bandung, West Java, monitors a line of machines on Tuesday, October 21, 2025. "We used to run three shifts, operating round the clock. Now we're down to one," he said during Tempo's visit.
It was not the machinery that forced the company to cut staff. It was the steep drop in demand for yarn. Andi explained that orders have declined for five straight years, and the current situation is the worst since 2022. Regular orders vanished one by one. Buyers increasingly compare local yarn to imported products, mostly from China, that are flooding the market. "Imported yarn sells at prices 30 percent lower." That significant gap leaves domestic factories struggling to compete.
Factory utilization has plummeted accordingly, from a steady 80 percent to around 50 percent of capacity. Machines often run just to pile up inventory, yet those piles grow harder to sell each day. "If this continues, the factory might have to halt production entirely," Andi said.
This phenomenon is not the only one. The Indonesian Fiber and Filament Yarn Producers Association (Apsyfi) has recorded a twofold surge in imports of filament yarn, particularly partially oriented yarn and drawn textured yarn from China, over the last four years. Apsyfi Chair Redma Gita Wirawasta stated that imports rose from 50,000 tons in 2021 to 100,000 tons in 2024. "This aggressive influx is hammering upstream textile producers," he said. Compounding the problem, utilization rates have also dropped among downstream factories that require these raw materials.
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