Antai Textile: 32 Years of Deep Cultivation in Textiles – Tapping into Market Rhythms with Dual-Track 'High-End + Cost-Effective' Products
In Zhangjiagang in July, the summer heat is intensifying, yet there’s an orderly bustle in Antai Textile’s production workshop – at the end of the assembly line, rolls of vibrant colored acrylic tops are passing through intelligent quality inspection equipment, soon to be shipped to a cooperative textile factory in Xinjiang; on the screen in the R&D center, Marketing Manager Li Xiong and Production Director Huang are engaged in a lively discussion over a set of data. “Look at this newly released industry weekly report,” Li Xiong points to the headline on the screen: “Sportswear Brands’ Q2 Turnover: High-End and Cost-Effective Brands Perform Better,” his finger gliding over the figure “National Retail Sales of Apparel, Footwear, and Headwear Up 3.1% YoY from Jan-Jun.” “In recent years, consumers’ demand for apparel has become increasingly ‘polarized’ – either pursuing design and quality, or valuing practical cost-effectiveness. Our product structure is right in step with this rhythm.”
Behind this discussion lies Antai Textile’s keen insight honed through 32 years of deep involvement in the textile industry. Since its establishment in Zhangjiagang in 1993, starting as a single acrylic yarn manufacturer, the company has now grown into a full-category supplier covering acrylic yarn, acrylic tops, colored acrylic tops, and fancy yarns, with an annual production capacity exceeding 10,000 tons. Its clients include leading domestic sportswear brands and overseas fast fashion groups. What underpins this confidence is its accurate capture of industry trends and rapid response capabilities.
The 'high-end demand' mentioned by Li Xiong corresponds precisely to Antai Textile’s focused efforts in the colored acrylic tops business in recent years. “Nowadays, high-end brands not only want unique colors but also eco-friendliness and efficiency,” he says, picking up a sample of peacock blue acrylic top. “Traditional white grey yarn requires multiple dyeing processes and causes significant pollution. Our colored acrylic tops are colored during the spinning stage, achieving a color fastness of level 4 or higher. Moreover, it eliminates the dyeing step for downstream enterprises, shortening the delivery cycle by 30%. At last month’s Guangzhou Textile and Apparel Artificial Intelligence Conference (2025 First China Textile and Apparel Artificial Intelligence Conference), many peers were talking about ‘flexible production.’ Our intelligent color matching system is a response to that – when a client provides a color card, the AI system generates a formula in two hours and can produce a sample in three days, more than twice as fast as traditional processes.”
The market demand for “cost-effectiveness” is steadily met by Antai’s acrylic yarn business. “Acrylic itself is known as ‘synthetic wool,’ with warmth retention close to wool but at a more affordable price,” Director Huang takes over the conversation, leading the reporter to the intelligent spinning machines in the workshop. “The fully automatic doffing machine we introduced last year reduced the breakage rate of acrylic yarn from 1.2% to 0.5%, saving 15 kilograms of raw material per ton of yarn. The 32-count acrylic yarn we now produce is not only suitable for basic sweatshirts and sweaters but can also be blended with cotton and linen, meeting the ‘affordable yet not cheap’ requirements of cost-effective brands.”
Keen market insight is inseparable from in-depth attention to industry policies and regional developments. When news broke in July about nine new policies for Xinjiang’s textile and apparel industry, Li Xiong immediately contacted local partners. “Xinjiang is a major textile province. The new policies mention ‘supporting high-quality raw material supply’ and ‘promoting green manufacturing’ – this is exactly our opportunity,” he explains. “Our acrylic tops use eco-friendly dyes, meeting the green production requirements of Xinjiang enterprises. Furthermore, through process optimization, fiber length deviation is controlled within 2%, so downstream enterprises using our tops for spinning experience fewer breakages and higher efficiency. Recently, orders from several large factories in Xinjiang have increased by 20%, all because of this.”
From the first spinning machine starting up in 1993 to now拥有 a provincial-level enterprise technology center and over 30 patents, Antai Textile’s growth trajectory is a microcosm of China’s textile industry shifting from scale expansion to quality improvement. Director Huang has spent 28 years in the workshop, witnessing the transformation from “manual labor” to intelligent production: “In the past, adjusting a machine’s parameters required veteran workers to spend half a day testing based on experience; now the central control system can automatically match raw material characteristics. Previously, fancy yarn designs were hand-drawn; now 3D modeling software directly generates patterns, allowing clients to see the finished product effect on the screen.” This technological iteration has made Antai’s fancy yarns unique in the market – from ripple yarn to slub yarn, from loop yarn to knot yarn, over 50 new patterns are launched annually, becoming an “inspiration library” for designer brands.
The afternoon sun filters through the workshop’s glass windows, illuminating the factory history wall marked “1993-2025.” Li Xiong looks at the yellowed old photos on the wall and sighs, “Thirty-two years have passed, and the textile industry has been constantly changing, but one thing remains the same – whoever stays closer to the market and closer to technology will walk more steadily.” At this moment, at the end of the production line, the latest batch of acrylic yarn bound for Southeast Asia is being loaded into containers, while engineers in the R&D center have already begun debugging a new eco-friendly acrylic formula. In this era of accelerating demand iteration, Antai Textile is anchoring itself on 32 years of accumulation, using the softness and tenacity of acrylic to weave the next chapter for textile practitioners.