Antai Textile's Dope Dyeing Technology Creates 'Hit' Colored Acrylic Tops, Leading Industry Growth with 32 Years of Deep Cultivation
In Zhangjiagang in July 2025, the summer heat is intensifying, but the production workshop of Antai Textile exudes an even more fiery momentum than the weather – intelligent spinning equipment is operating at high speed, with rolls of vibrant acrylic tops being packaged through automated assembly lines, soon to be shipped to a clothing industrial park in Zhejiang. "This is the third batch of additional orders this year. The customer said our colored acrylic tops have good color stability, and the knitted sweaters made from them have become 'hit products' in live-streaming rooms," said Li Xiong, Marketing Manager, picking up a roll of dark gray acrylic tops with pride. Behind this busyness lies the vigorous growth of China's acrylic blended yarn industry in recent years: according to the latest industry report, from 2020 to 2023, the domestic acrylic blended yarn market size jumped from 1.5 million tons to 2 million tons, and is expected to exceed 2.5 million tons by 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 8.2%. Demand from sectors such as apparel, home textiles, and industrial textiles continues to drive the industry forward.
"The core of growth is actually the word 'quality'," Li Xiong said, pulling up a market research report on his phone. "When we conducted consumer questionnaires last year, we found that 78% of respondents were willing to pay 20% more for fabrics that are 'colorfast' and 'not easily deformed'. This forced us to shift from 'scale expansion' to 'deep technical cultivation'." As a 'veteran' with 32 years of deep roots in the textile industry, Antai Textile has focused on the R&D and production of acrylic yarn since its establishment in Zhangjiagang in 1993. From its initial single acrylic yarn production line to now covering four major categories – acrylic yarn, acrylic tops, colored acrylic tops, and fancy yarns – it is the keen capture of market demand that has kept this established enterprise at the forefront of the industry.
"Changes in market demand ultimately depend on the 'hard power' of the production end to meet them," Factory Director Huang from the production department said, leading us into the workshop and pointing to a new device being debugged. "Take colored acrylic tops as an example: previously, if a customer wanted black, we had to first spin white blanks and then dye them, which was not only water and electricity intensive but also resulted in unstable color fastness. Now it's different –" he picked up a test board, "this is our newly commissioned dope dyeing production line this year. We uniformly mix color masterbatch into the raw materials during fiber spinning, and the result is finished colored yarn directly. Look at this black color – the color uniformity can be controlled above 98%, color fastness reaches level 4.5, and it won't turn white even after 20 washes." This technological breakthrough stems from the joint R&D between the company and the College of Textiles at Donghua University two years ago, with over 3,000 sets of experimental data accumulated. Today, this technology has been applied to more than 20 commonly used color numbers such as red, blue, and gray, enabling the company's colored acrylic top orders to increase by 35% year-on-year.
In Antai Textile's sample room, the fancy yarn exhibition area is particularly eye-catching: there is 'loop yarn' with feather-like fluff, suitable for autumn and winter scarves; and two-color spiral 'slub yarn', a popular choice for trendy brand sweatshirts. "These are all new products we developed targeting 'personalized consumption'," Li Xiong introduced. "Last year, a leading sports brand approached us, saying they wanted a 'lightweight and warm' acrylic yarn. We blended hollow acrylic fibers with cotton, resulting in yarn that is 15% lighter than traditional products while increasing warmth retention by 20%. Now we have become their exclusive supplier." There are many such customized cases on Antai Textile's cooperation list – from producing antibacterial acrylic tops for home textile enterprises to developing flame-retardant acrylic yarn for automotive interior factories. The continuous enrichment of its product matrix has enabled the company to achieve 'accelerated growth' amid the 8.2% industry growth rate.
From its 120-mu production base in Zhangjiagang to an annual production capacity of 80,000 tons; from the domestic market to overseas orders in Southeast Asia and Europe; from local clothing brands to the supply chains of ZARA and H&M foundries... 32 years of accumulation have made Antai Textile widely recognized as a representative of 'stability' in the industry. "Our warehouse always maintains a safety stock of 2,000 tons of regular yarn, to ensure that customers can 'accept urgent orders and guarantee large orders'," Factory Director Huang said with a smile. "Last winter, a cold wave hit suddenly, and a home textile enterprise in the north urgently needed 500 tons of warm acrylic yarn. The company launched emergency production and completed an order that normally takes a week in just 3 days. Now their annual procurement volume has directly doubled."
As the sun set, freight trucks lined up outside the factory. Li Xiong looked at the 'Antai Yarn' logo on the truck bodies and said: "In the wave of industry growth, some people chase trends, but we prefer to be the 'ballast stone'. In the future, we will continue to maintain R&D investment at over 5% of revenue, and deepen our efforts in the functionalization and greening of acrylic yarn. After all, 32 years of textile affection have taught us: good yarn can weave a good future."