The thumbnail photo shows a “Seed Ball” (post-harvest).
This ball contains the flax seeds inside.
(This is what I posted on Threads on June 18, 2024.)
You may have heard that “linen prices are soaring.” But do you know why?
As a linen & hemp professional, I’d like to share facts from within the field (it’s a bit long, if you’re interested).
Unstable yields
The Flanders region (northern France + Belgium + the Netherlands) is the core growing area for flax, the raw plant for linen. It is the world’s most renowned and traditional source of top-quality raw material.
In recent years, the planned flax cultivation area there has been about 160,000 hectares. Because flax is an agricultural crop, both the annual harvest volume and the intrinsic fiber quality vary. In other words, sown area does not map cleanly to yield or quality—good and poor harvests happen.
For example, roughly 150,000 tons of flax (raw material basis) were harvested last year, yet less than 100,000 tons were considered to “maintain consistent quality as fiber.” The remainder went to industrial uses such as paper and composites.
Expanding global demand
Over the past decade, demand for linen in India has exploded. About 30 years ago, domestic linen spinning had effectively disappeared (replaced by imports from China). A large conglomerate then invested heavily and ran a major national campaign for a linen-shirt brand. It worked: a large linen market emerged, multiple spinning mills were established, and demand for flax raw material surged. India’s linen market is very robust, and buyers tend not to hold back even when raw material prices are high.
Impact of climate change
At the Alliance for Linen and Hemp meetings in Europe, stakeholders share a clear recognition that climate change is having a major impact. The issues are not only warming at origin; volatile weather is also causing more flooding across central Europe, destroying farmland. (Flanders is low-lying and spreads around the mouths of large rivers, making it vulnerable.)
Prolonged Ukraine–Russia war
Another flax-growing zone lies across northern Ukraine and southern Belarus. Raw material from this area is mainly exported to the global market via Lithuania. As you know, supply from this region is in an extremely difficult situation. While this material typically doesn’t go into high-grade fine linen yarns (it’s more often used for heavier canvases and curtains), the halt in supply has pushed more raw-material demand onto Flanders.
Disappearance of distribution inventory
Up through the 2010s, there used to be buffer inventory in the supply chain—carryover stocks of the previous year’s flax crop at distribution stages. During the COVID-19 period, inventories were adjusted down, and after the pandemic that buffer essentially disappeared.
From Japan’s perspective, the weak yen is of course another major factor when looking at prices.
So where does the linen market go from here? I’ll share our outlook in a separate thread at a later date.
(This was posted on Threads on June 18, 2024.)
