SHANGHAI – The world’s biggest organisers of textile events has announced the cancellation of three of its textile fairs due to the coronavirus outbreak. Messe Frankfurt’s three Shanghai textile fairs, Intertextile Shanghai Apparel Fabrics Spring Edition, Yarn Expo Spring and Intertextile Shanghai Home Textiles, were scheduled from 11–13 March at the National Exhibition and Convention Centre. We understand the fairs will be rescheduled for later in the year although new dates have yet to be announced. It is also hard to see where they will fit into what is an already hectic events calendar.
“Messe Frankfurt has been an active player in the China market for over 30 years now, so we stand fully behind the government’s efforts to control the outbreak,” Ms Wendy Wen, senior general manager of Messe Frankfurt (HK) Ltd outlined. “This includes the recent suspension of large-scale trade and economic events in a number of cities, so with this and the wellbeing of all our stakeholders in mind, we have made the decision to reschedule our upcoming textile fairs in Shanghai to a later date. Our teams are making every effort to find suitable alternatives, but we will only make the decision to go ahead with these fairs when it is deemed safe to do so.”
Meanwhile, stock markets China saw their biggest daily fall for five years amid fears about the impact on the global economy of the coronavirus epidemic.
The benchmark Shanghai composite index fell 8.7 per cent on Monday on the back of sentiment that has built up for 10 days during the market shutdown for the lunar new year.
The losses were the worst on the Chinese markets since 2015 although they jumped back later in the day to 8 per cent.
The death toll from the outbreak has risen to 361 and more than 17,000 people infected.