April Fool’s Day has taken an unexpectedly long summer break.
What started as a tit-for-tat trade jab has turned into a prolonged gut punch as the tariff developments over the past 129 days, give or take, have injected fresh instability across the textile supply chain, Lenzing’s latest financial report reflected.
More specifically, the reciprocal tariffs and retaliations that saw the China-and-U.S. trade collapse also necessitated a reconfiguration of textile and nonwovens value chains, the wood-based cellulosic fiber producer shared in its investor presentation for the first half of 2025. And as far as the group’s textile business is concerned, the first half was “characterized by high volatility.” Despite subdued demand, the first quarter performed largely in line with expectations.
Related Stories
Revenue rose 2.3 percent to 1.34 billion euros ($1.56 billion). Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) jumped 63.3 percent to $313 million, reaching a 20 percent margin. The increase included one-off gains—about $35.6 million from selling surplus EU emission allowances and around $14.6 million from revaluing biological assets.
That said, April’s introduction of these additional U.S. tariffs led to the market environment’s “significant deterioration,” with China hit particularly hard by the measures.
“Due to the extraordinarily high tariffs on Chinese textile imports, several large U.S. retailers canceled their orders with Chinese clothing manufacturers at short notice,” Lenzing’s half year 2025 report reads, though noting that any of the textile sector’s value chains “rapidly shifting” to other procurement markets—such as India or Southeast Asia—was unclear for the reporting period.
“Given the unclear political situation and the hope of an imminent agreement between the USA and China, many U.S. brands adopted a wait-and-see approach,” the report reads.
The Vienna-based supplier’s recovery slowed amid international tariff pressures and ongoing trade uncertainty. Market prices remained at a low level; viscose prices continued to decline in Q2. Prices for dissolving wood pulp—a key input in cellulosic fiber production—fell 18 percent to $800 per ton for the first half of 2025. International cotton prices proved less volatile than the previous year, while prices for polyester staple fibers were 2 percent lower than the previous year.
Despite headwinds in Q2, the Austrian fiber firm furthered the overall progress of its operational recovery in the first half of the year, per CEO Rohit Aggarwal, with the group’s performance program “clearly contributing” to boosted earnings.
“At the same time, we are seeing tangible effects from the growing uncertainties in international trade in the second quarter—particularly as a consequence of the aggressive tariffs policy,” Aggarwal said in a statement. “These developments not only affect our visibility, but also our earnings. For this reason, we are all the more determined to continue our measures to secure our turnaround in the long term and further strengthen our margins.”
That determination extends to the group’s financial future, too.
Take its performance program. Now bolstered by Georg Kasperkovitz, who joined Lenzing’s managing board team as the group’s chief operations officer in May, the holistic initiative aims to “strengthen long-term crisis resilience and enhance agility in the face of market changes” by improving EBITDA and generating free cash flow through “increased profitability and consistent cost excellence.”
