The Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC) has refreshed its product trade profile for nonwovens weighing more than 150g/m2, classified under HS tariff line 560314, giving sourcing teams an updated reference point for one of the technical textiles sector's workhorse materials.

The OEC page aggregates exporter and importer rankings, trade values and flow-direction data for the tariff line. Heavyweight nonwovens in this category feed multiple downstream tiers: interlinings and fusible components for apparel, geotextiles, filtration media, hygiene substrates and industrial applications.

Why does HS 560314 matter to softgoods sourcing?

The 150g/m2 threshold separates heavyweight nonwovens from lighter grades classified under adjacent HS 5603 subheadings. Buyers specifying interlinings, insulation layers or composite substrates for outerwear and technical garments routinely cross this line, which shifts the product into a distinct tariff and trade-statistics bucket.

Because customs authorities record trade at the eight- and six-digit level, the OEC dataset lets sourcing managers benchmark supplier countries by export value in this specific grade rather than relying on broader textile-category figures.

What can buyers do with the data?

The profile serves several supply-chain functions:

• Country benchmarking. Exporter rankings show which producer nations dominate shipments of heavyweight nonwovens, informing dual-sourcing decisions.
• Import-side visibility. Importer rankings reveal where competing buyers concentrate their procurement, a signal for capacity tightness.
• Tariff homework. Six-digit HS alignment lets teams map the data onto their own duty schedules and rules-of-origin calculations under applicable trade agreements.
• Flow mapping. Bilateral flow data identifies which corridors carry the most volume, useful when assessing freight exposure and lead-time risk.

The OEC draws its figures from official international trade statistics, and its product pages are widely used across the textile and apparel trade as a neutral cross-country reference.

What decision does this force?

For sourcing directors, an updated country-level view of HS 560314 flows is a prompt to re-check concentration risk. If a supplier base for heavyweight nonwovens leans heavily on one or two exporting countries, the data provides the evidence base — grounded in a specific tariff line rather than category averages — for diversifying origins or locking in alternative capacity before the next sourcing cycle.