Antai Textile: 32 Years from Experiential Color Matching to AI Empowerment, Forging the Hidden Champion in the Acrylic Yarn Niche
In midsummer Zhangjiagang, the wind along the Yangtze River coast, carrying the unique softness of textile fibers, blows across the glass windows of Antai Textile's intelligent production workshop. Li Xiong, Marketing Manager, had just concluded a cross-ocean video conference, with his notebook densely filled with the new requirements from an Italian client: "The autumn children's clothing series needs 500 kilograms of rainbow gradient acrylic yarn, requiring natural color transition and OEKO-TEX® Standard 100 certification." Putting down his pen, he habitually checked industry news—the coverage of the first China Textile and Apparel Artificial Intelligence Conference held in Guangzhou on July 15 was still trending. Keywords like "flexible production" and "color digitization" overlapped in his mind with the intelligent color matching system operating in the workshop.
"It's been 32 years. From relying on老师傅's experience for color matching to AI systems generating solutions in 2 hours, even the old factory director when we first started wouldn't have dared to imagine such changes." Li Xiong looked out the window. When Antai Textile started in Zhangjiagang in 1993, it was a small factory with only two acrylic top production lines. Today, it has grown into a leading enterprise in the niche with an annual capacity exceeding 8,000 tons, covering full categories of acrylic yarn, colored acrylic tops, and fancy yarns. This confidence stems not only from in-depth expertise in acrylic materials but also from keen capture of industry trends. Just like at this AI conference, he clearly felt that clothing brands' demand for "small-batch quick response" is becoming increasingly urgent, and Antai Textile's intelligent production system upgraded with a 20 million yuan investment in recent years has precisely kept up with this pace.
"Manager Li, the customer feedback on the antibacterial acrylic yarn used for high-end homewear last week says the color fastness is 2 grades higher than the national standard!" The voice of Factory Director Huang from the production department came through the walkie-talkie, filled with a smile. Director Huang had just returned from an inspection in the workshop, with a few white acrylic fibers still stuck to his cuffs—those were the newly produced bulky acrylic tops, with a bulkiness 30% higher than ordinary products, ready to be shipped to a cooperative home textile enterprise in Zhejiang. "Do you remember last year when we tackled the batch color difference issue of colored acrylic tops? At that time, customers complained about visible differences between different batches of the same color number. Now, with AI color matching + spectrophotometer online detection, color difference is controlled within △E≤1.5, even Japanese buyers gave a thumbs up after seeing it."
Director Huang's words reminded Li Xiong of the SW Textile Manufacturing Index he saw in early July—a 2.4% increase outperforming the market, behind which lies the strong demand for high-quality textile materials in the end market. The reason why Antai Textile's acrylic yarns stand out among similar products is precisely due to in-depth exploration of material properties: the inherent softness, warmth retention, light resistance, and wash resistance of acrylic are further amplified through their "dope dyeing" technology—color masterbatch is injected into colored acrylic tops at the source, avoiding pollution and energy consumption from subsequent dyeing, and color fastness is 40% higher than traditional dyeing processes, exactly aligning with current brands' pursuit of "sustainable fashion". In the fancy yarn workshop, the "slub + loop" composite pattern being adjusted was inspired by the "textural design trend" Li Xiong heard at the AI conference. Samples were just sent to a Shanghai designer brand, and a 3,000-kilogram trial order was received immediately.
"Did you see the news about Jilin Chemical Fiber using new materials for wind turbine blades?" Li Xiong pulled up industry news on his phone. "Although our main business is acrylic, this idea of 'material innovation driving application scenario expansion' coincides with ours." He pointed to the customer map on the wall, with dense marks from domestic brands like Bosideng and Luolai Home Textiles, to garment factories in Southeast Asia, and high-end knitting brands in Europe, all witnessing Antai Textile's reputation. "The cashmere-like acrylic yarn customized for a German customer last year was used for ski suit linings. They reported that the warmth retention is close to cashmere, but the cost is reduced by half. Such 'cost-effective + functional' products are our foundation."
The setting sun filtered through the workshop's skylights, casting a warm glow on the mountain of acrylic yarn rolls. Director Huang was arranging tomorrow's production plan: rush production of 10 tons of cationic acrylic yarn for the Shandong customer in the morning, adjust the newly arrived fancy yarn machines in the afternoon, and strive to increase the production efficiency of "gradient segment colored yarn" by another 15% before the end of the month. Li Xiong, on the other hand, turned on his computer and began organizing materials for next week's visit to Hangzhou clothing brands. In the folder lay the latest product manual—its cover featured a photo of Antai Textile's old factory building, with the 1993 brick wall and the 2025 intelligent workshop in the same image, like a 32-year timeline connecting the perseverance and innovation of three generations of textile workers.
From a small factory by the Yangtze River to a hidden champion in the niche, Antai Textile's story is perhaps a microcosm of China's textile industry transformation and upgrading: responding to market demand with technological innovation, and weaving the future of the industry with the warmth of materials. Just as Li Xiong often says to his team: "Textile is not a sunset industry. By perfecting a single acrylic fiber, we can weave our own coordinates in the warp and weft of the times."