Market evolution: Plastic footwear (CN 6402) — 2015–2025

Introduction

This report examines the EU's external trade in plastic and rubber footwear (CN 6402) over the period 2015–2025. The product covers a broad range of non-waterproof, non-orthopaedic, non-toy footwear with rubber or plastic soles and uppers — from everyday casual shoes and sandals to sports and ski footwear.

Over this decade, the EU's trade in CN 6402 underwent a structural transformation. Import values rose by 32% (from €4.47 billion to €5.91 billion), while export values grew by 74% (from €1.14 billion to €1.99 billion). Yet behind these headline numbers lies a more complex story: a dramatic reorientation of sourcing away from traditional partners toward Southeast Asia, a collapse in EU production volume offset by a doubling of unit values, and a widening net import dependency that now exceeds 70%. The report is structured around three main themes that capture these dynamics.

1. The Eastward Pivot: How Southeast Asia Displaced China as the Growth Engine of EU Footwear Imports

China remains dominant but has stagnated while ASEAN partners surged

Throughout the period, China was the EU's largest single source of CN 6402 imports, accounting for €2.90 billion in 2015 and €3.04 billion in 2025 — a modest increase of only 4.9%. Chinese imports peaked at €3.94 billion in 2022 before retreating. By contrast, imports from Vietnam more than doubled (+112.1%), rising from €621 million to €1.32 billion. Indonesia (+114.9%), Cambodia (+179.9%), and Bangladesh (+142.6%) all recorded even faster growth from smaller bases.

Source: EU imports by partner country

Import concentration fell sharply as sourcing diversified

The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) for imports by value declined from 4,472 to 3,275 (−26.8%), and the volume-based HHI fell even more steeply from 5,823 to 3,574 (−38.6%). These levels still indicate a moderately concentrated import market — China's share alone keeps the index high — but the downward trend reveals a deliberate diversification strategy. EU importers have clearly been building multi-country supply chains across ASEAN to reduce dependency on any single origin, likely driven by cost considerations, tariff preferences under EU free-trade agreements, and risk management after the supply-chain disruptions of 2020–2022.

The United Kingdom's import share collapsed after Brexit

Imports from the United Kingdom fell by 86.9%, from €259 million in 2015 to just €34 million in 2025, making it one of the highest-volatility import relationships in the dataset with a coefficient of variation of 1.42. This collapse reflects the UK's departure from the EU customs union, which reclassified UK-EU trade from intra-EU to extra-EU flows and introduced customs formalities, rules of origin requirements, and new regulatory barriers. The maximum import value of €304 million (recorded before Brexit's full impact) highlights how significant this trade channel once was.

2. The Value Revolution: Rising Unit Prices, Vanishing Pairs, and the EU's Upmarket Trajectory

EU production volume collapsed while production value grew

Perhaps the most striking structural shift in the data is the decline in EU domestic production of CN 6402 footwear. Production volume (in pairs) fell by 37.9%, from 98.4 million pairs in 2015 to 61.1 million pairs in 2025, having hit a trough of just 42.6 million pairs during the pandemic. Yet production value rose by 20.3%, from €1.28 billion to €1.54 billion. The implied average production price per pair nearly doubled — from approximately €13.03 to €25.25 — indicating a decisive shift toward higher-value, premium footwear manufacturing within the EU.

Export prices surged across every product segment

EU export unit values (EUR per pair) rose dramatically over the period:

Source: Product segment breakdown – exports

The gap between import and export prices widened substantially. In 2015, the EU imported footwear at an average of €5.84 per pair and exported at €15.65 per pair — a ratio of roughly 1:2.7. By 2025, imports averaged €7.41 per pair while exports reached €25.83 — a ratio of 1:3.5. This increasing price premium reflects the EU's repositioning as a source of higher-quality, design-intensive, or branded footwear, even as it imports mass-market products in growing volumes.

The product mix shifted toward heavier, higher-value footwear

Import tonnage grew by 27.4% (from 392,668 to 500,249 tonnes) while the number of imported pairs grew by only 3.8% (from 765 million to 794 million). The average weight per imported pair thus rose from 0.51 kg to 0.63 kg — a 22.8% increase that signals a compositional shift. Within the product segments, lightweight sandals and thongs (CN 640220) saw their import volume fall by 19.9% in tonnage (and by 28.9% in pairs), while general footwear (CN 640299) surged by 43.6% in tonnage. Sports footwear imports (CN 640219) grew by 73.4% in tonnage. This suggests EU consumers are increasingly buying heavier, more substantial rubber/plastic footwear rather than simple sandals.

3. Deepening Dependency: The EU's Growing Import Reliance Amid Export Dynamism

Net import reliance climbed to 70%

The EU's net import reliance for CN 6402 rose from 49.1% in 2015 to 70.2% in 2025, peaking at 75.9% in 2022. This means that for every €10 of CN 6402 footwear consumed within the EU, over €7 is now sourced from outside the bloc. The widening trade deficit — from −€3.33 billion to −€3.92 billion — underscores this structural dependency, even though EU export growth (+74.3%) outpaced import growth (+32.2%) in percentage terms.

Source: Autonomy & vulnerability indicators

The EU increasingly functions as a trade hub

The export propensity — which now exceeds 100% — indicates that the EU exports more CN 6402 footwear value than it produces domestically. Combined with the fact that trade intensity also surpassed 100%, the EU's role in this market is increasingly that of a processor, brander, and distributor: importing semi-finished or finished goods from Asia, adding value through design and branding, and re-exporting premium products to high-income markets. Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Poland emerge as the most specialised EU exporters, with Belgium showing the highest revealed symmetric comparative advantage (RSCA of 0.34) and Poland the fastest export growth (+349.2% over the period).

Supply-side shocks highlighted Vietnam's price vulnerability

Volatility analysis reveals that China's import flows are the most stable (coefficient of variation of 0.10), while newer sourcing countries show significantly higher volatility — Bangladesh (0.40), Indonesia (0.31), and Myanmar (0.85). The most notable supply shock was a price shock from Vietnam in 2022 (abnormality score of 36.0, unit price shift of +26.1%), affecting a partner that accounts for 22.6% of import value. This coincided with the post-pandemic global logistics crisis and underscores the risk inherent in the EU's accelerating shift toward Southeast Asian sourcing — a shift that reduces concentration risk vis-à-vis China but introduces new volatility from less mature supply chains.

Conclusion

The EU's trade in CN 6402 footwear over 2015–2025 tells a story of simultaneous deepening dependency and upward repositioning. Import reliance has grown from 49% to over 70%, driven by a sourcing pivot away from China toward a broader set of ASEAN partners — Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Bangladesh in particular. Brexit effectively eliminated the UK as a significant import channel. Domestically, EU production has shed over a third of its volume but has nearly doubled its per-pair value, consistent with a shift toward premium manufacturing. Exports have grown strongly in value (+74%) but peaked in 2022 and have since softened. The EU's role is increasingly that of a trade hub: importing mass-market footwear at relatively low prices and exporting higher-value products, with export unit values consistently 3–4 times those of imports.

Key risks going forward include the growing volatility of ASEAN supply chains, the exposure to price shocks in rapidly scaling sourcing countries, and the widening gap between domestic production capacity and consumption demand. The decline in import concentration is a positive development for supply-chain resilience, but the sheer scale of external dependency — with over €5.9 billion in annual imports — makes CN 6402 a strategically significant product category for EU trade policy.