China Artificial Leather Market and Trend

Artificial leather is a multi-layer structured product with woven fabric, knitted fabric, or non-woven fabric as the backing materials and PVC or PU as the coating materials. Artificial leather can be divided into PVC leather and PU leather. PU leather become more popular because its performance is getting closer to natural leather.

China's artificial leather market size was 4.4 billion meters in 2017, growing to 4.8 billion meters in 2022, with a CAGR of 1.8% from 2017 to 2022. Driven by the economic recovery from COVID-19, China's artificial leather market is expected to reach 5.8 billion meters in 2027, with a CAGR of 3.9% from 2022 to 2027.

In recent years, due to strict environmental protection policies and labor costs rising, the number of Chinese textile companies keeps decreasing. There are 18,054 textile enterprises in 2020, down 12.1% compared to 2014. So the concentration of the textile industry will continue to rise in China.

Since the 1950s, the production area of artificial leather in the world has gradually shifted from Europe to Asia especially China. China gradually becomes the manufacturing center of artificial leather products. With the continuous development and maturity of artificial leather technology, the application fields of artificial leather expand from traditional use such as shoes, bags, garments, and furniture to new applications such as automobile interior, outdoor sports, home decoration, and electronic products.