On a winter day early this year, the wind sometimes made things uncomfortably cold in Xihu, a small town in Changhua County, central Taiwan. In Xihu, however, not everybody finds such chilly weather undesirable. Low temperatures mean that the owners of restaurants offering lamb hot pot, for which Xihu has long been known, see profits rise on increased sales of the dish, which is reputed to keep one warm on wintry days. Nick Lu (陸亮豪), sales manager of Xihu-based Pacific Feather Co., also welcomes cold weather because it could mean good business for the down and feather industry. “If it’s cold for three days in a row, gets warm for one or two days and then gets cold again for a week, you’ll see especially good sales of down clothing. It’s a rule of thumb in the industry,” Lu says.

There are around 30 companies in the down and feather industry registered with the Taiwan Feather Exporters’ Association (TFEA). Pacific Feather is one of the 10 enterprises in Taiwan that process down and feathers for use by garment and bedding manufacturers; the other 20-odd companies are small preliminary cleaning operations or the headquarters units of down garment manufacturers with overseas factories. Xihu’s prominence in down and feather processing can be seen in the fact that the majority of Taiwan’s 10 businesses in the sector are located in the area.

To the rest of the country, however, Xihu is probably better known for its lamb hot pot, as most of its down and feathers are exported. As much as 95 percent of the processed materials from Pacific Feather’s Xihu factory are shipped abroad, for example, with the remainder used by local makers of finished down products. “Processing isn’t known as a major manufacturing sector in Taiwan or even overseas, for that matter. In fact, I didn’t know the business existed until I accepted a job in the field,” says Lu, who started to work for Pacific Feather about 13 years ago.

Finished down products made by Pacific Feather Co. The firm has been working to build its own retail brand in recent years. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)

Despite the industry’s low profile, Taiwan gained a reputation as a center of down processing around 1980. Today, approximately one-quarter of all processed down and feathers sold worldwide are still produced in Taiwan, even though many Taiwanese-owned enterprises in the sector began developing their production capacity in mainland China and elsewhere more than 20 years ago. Most of the processed down and feathers are sold to bedding and garment manufacturers, but some local companies also supply finished retail products for internationally known brands like Burberry and Fila. Pacific Feather and Hop Lion Feather Works Corp., which operates a factory in Taoyuan County, northern Taiwan, are the top enterprises in Taiwan’s down and feather processing industry, with each generating annual revenue of around NT$5 billion (US$172 million).

Manufacturing Know-How

According to Lu, techniques for processing down and feathers were developed about 200 years ago in Germany, which later passed the manufacturing know-how to Japan. Prior to the mid-1910s, people in Taiwan collected down and feathers from slaughtered poultry, but shipped the gathered items overseas for processing.

Records from the TFEA indicate that the earliest local processing occurred in 1914, when a Changhua County resident began to turn a profit by manually processing feathers collected in the area. Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule from 1895 to 1945, and in 1918 the Japanese began automating the feather processing sector in Taiwan by introducing modern rinsing and sorting equipment.

TFEA chairman Yao K. Y. Chen (陳焜耀) observes that the Japanese government made great profits in the 1920s and 1930s by processing down and feathers in Taiwan. Taiwanese processors, however, really saw their business take off when the Korean War (1950–1953) broke out. “The US army had a great demand for sleeping bags at the time. So Taiwan took the job of providing them with bags filled with processed down and feathers,” says Chen, who is also president of Hop Lion. The company began in 1908 as an exporter to the Hong Kong market and has operated in the sector longer than any other enterprise in Taiwan.

Jessica Nien, center, helps employees analyze down content at Pacific Feather’s factory in Xihu, Changhua County, home to Taiwan’s biggest cluster of down and feather processors. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)

After the end of World War II (1939–1945), Taiwanese down and feather processors also began working with local textile companies to tap the Japanese market as that country began to rebuild its economy. With Japanese consumers seeking a higher quality of life, nearly all of the down apparel and comforters made in Taiwan were shipped to Japan. Japanese demand continued to grow, and that country became the largest market in the world for such goods in the 1980s.

It was not easy to satisfy the Japanese market, but the challenge motivated Taiwanese manufacturers to improve processing techniques, particularly the method of sorting mixtures of down and feathers according to the percentage of down content they contain. In the 1970s and 1980s, according to Chen, processors worldwide could turn out materials with an average of 60-percent down content, but Japanese customers kept asking for more. A mixture with high down content provides greater warmth and has higher fill power, or fluffiness, which is crucial to weight-sensitive applications. The Japanese demand for more down content goaded Taiwanese companies to upgrade facilities and improve techniques until the figure climbed to 95 percent. Reaching 100 percent is very difficult to accomplish with mechanized production lines.

Like other manufacturing sectors in Taiwan, however, down and feather processing businesses began to move some of their operations to mainland China and Southeast Asia in the late 1980s. “Workers are much younger in mainland China. Their eyesight is especially good for composition analysis,” says May Chien (簡秀梅), who manages Hop Lion’s factory in Taoyuan County. An essential processing procedure, composition analysis involves picking out and calculating the percentage of down fibers, residues and tiny feathers intertwined with down clusters in a given sample. If the sample is found to have higher or lower down content than specified by a client, the batch will be remixed until it reaches the right percentage.

As late as 1993, Hop Lion still operated seven factories in Taiwan, but today only the Taoyuan facility remains. The enterprise has expanded its manufacturing network in mainland China, however, and currently has four factories there. Selling processed down to downstream manufacturers constitutes the majority of the remaining Taiwanese factory’s revenue, with additional income coming from manufacturing finished bedding products with high down content for customers in Taiwan and Japan. Hop Lion’s down garment manufacturing, which usually requires more labor than bedding manufacturing, has moved overseas altogether.

Seeking Opportunities

“The migration was mainly to take advantage of cheap labor and raw materials,” says Nick Lu, noting that Pacific Feather, which was founded in 1967, started seeking opportunities overseas in 1990 and founded a factory in Nanjing, eastern mainland China, in 1997. According to the TFEA, up until the late 1970s, local processors relied on sourcing down and feathers from ducks and geese raised in places such as Yilan County in northern Taiwan and Pingtung County in the south. That supply was insufficient for the processing companies to continue growing, however, which led them to turn to imports. Today, locally produced raw materials account for only 20 percent of all of down and feathers processed in Taiwan. Mainland China remains the world’s top producer of duck and goose meat, which means that supplies of down and feathers are more plentiful there than in other countries, and many Taiwanese processors moved across the strait to get closer to this important source of raw materials. Hop Lion, for example, set up a factory in Heilongjiang province, which borders Russia and produces a specific type of goose feathers that have a reputation for being a great insulator against the cold.

A worker at Hop Lion’s factory in Taoyuan tests down for fluffiness. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)

Establishing facilities in mainland China is only a part of Taiwanese processors’ efforts to secure diverse sources of raw materials. Multiple sources are crucial in the sector, as supplies from a specific area can be disrupted by weather conditions and natural disasters. Building up a diversity of suppliers also improves the processors’ capacity to offer clients materials of varying down content and fill power. Hop Lion, for example, has gained suppliers in Canada and Europe by entering into ownership agreements with partners in those places. Today, the company is one of the major buyers of white goose feathers produced in Poland and north of the Arctic Circle.

In his search for raw materials of the highest quality, Hop Lion’s Chen has even flown to Iceland to buy eiderdown from local collectors. Eiderdown gets its name from the eider, as several species of sea ducks that breed in the far north are collectively known. Chen says that eiderdown is a rarity, partly because it has a reputation for exceptional warmth and resistance to moisture, and partly because the endangered birds are protected by law. Mother eiders peck down off their own breast and place it around the eggs they lay. It is collected after the ducklings and the mother have left the nest. Finished products filled with such rare down can be extremely expensive, with a 1.2-kilogram comforter filled with hand-selected eiderdown of more than 95 percent down content fetching as much as NT$400,000 (US$13,800) in Taiwan. Although processed eiderdown is not a staple for Hop Lion, Chen’s pursuit of it reveals his effort to diversify raw materials.

Pacific Feather’s Lu says that locating a variety of sources for raw materials has become even more important as the supply of down and feathers, especially goose feathers, is decreasing because of the worldwide decline in poultry husbandry. Dietary changes have played a role in that drop. Lu notes that in mainland China, the growing preference for Western-style foods has led to a decrease in consumption of duck and goose meat, which has in turn reduced the amount of down and feathers available. Conversely, sales to feather processors have helped keep poultry operators in business in Taiwan. “Some poultry farmers in Taiwan say they would have given up raising ducks and geese a long time ago but for the extra income from sales of feathers in addition to that from meat,” Lu says.

Hop Lion still makes finished bedding products at its Taoyuan factory, but has moved all down garment manufacturing, which requires more labor, to mainland China. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)

After decades of effort to improve their competitiveness, both Hop Lion and Pacific Feather are optimistic about the future despite the challenges ahead. One of those challenges is increasing competition from enterprises in mainland China that began to emerge in the 1990s. Chen, however, still has great confidence in the marketing ability and management of Taiwanese-run operations at home and abroad. At the same time, Taiwan’s status in the worldwide industry can be seen in Chen’s election in 2006 as the first Asian chairman of the Technical Commission of the International Down and Feather Bureau. Founded in Paris in 1953, the bureau is the industry’s international association of enterprises and testing institutes, with the Technical Commission responsible for setting global standards for assessing the quality of down and feather materials.

Both Hop Lion and Pacific Feather have tried to develop in a new direction by establishing their own retail brands of down clothing and bedding over the past several years, although their sales of finished products are still fairly limited. In Taiwan, the companies use their showrooms and factories as sales channels for branded goods. In mainland China, which the TFEA has ranked the biggest market for finished down products worldwide since 2008, Pacific Feather sells goods that bear its own brand on taobao.com, the country’s largest online shopping website.

Promoting Local Products

Meanwhile, the incomes of local duck and goose husbandry operations are benefiting from the Republic of China government’s promotion of locally produced down and feathers. In May 2009, the government listed high-end agriculture as one of the six emerging industries targeted for future development. In line with that goal, in 2011 the Cabinet-level Council of Agriculture (COA) began encouraging the use of locally produced down and feathers by working with businesses in the sector to promote high-quality finished products. One highly visible part of the campaign was a press conference organized by the COA in November that year. During the event, the COA presented an overview of the local industry and announced the sales launch of 5,000 down comforters made by 13 TFEA member companies. All the comforters carried a logo indicating that they were made of locally produced raw materials and had 90 percent down content.

“Locally grown feathers processed in Taiwan are fresher than those from abroad. And the freshness of feathers means the down’s structure is more intact with better ability to give warmth,” says Chang Chin-chiang (張近強), a senior specialist in the marketing division of the National Animal Industry Foundation. Established in 2000, the organization is now working with the COA to educate the public about the industry and the advantages of locally produced down and feathers. “Taiwan’s duck and goose farms are quite advanced in management, which is also essential to the quality of feathers,” she adds.

Models promote the use of locally processed down and feathers at a press conference held by the Council of Agriculture in November 2011. (Photo Courtesy of National Animal Industry Foundation)

On the other hand, Jessica Nien (粘春蓉), general manager of Pacific Feather, points out that there is still much room to promote the use of local down and feathers in finished products such as bedding. Whereas 95 percent of the comforters in Japan are filled with the natural insulation material, she notes, the figure is less than 30 percent in Taiwan. Along with their warmth, Nien also highlights the environmental friendliness of her company’s materials. “Down and feathers are organic and degradable and good for our environment. That’s what we should convey to consumers,” she says. After decades of exporting their materials worldwide, Taiwan’s down and feather processors are also beginning to receive more attention at home, thereby developing a unique kind of “soft power” that all Taiwanese can be proud of.

Write to Oscar Chung at oscar@mail.gio.gov.tw