Antai Textile: The 32-Year Textile Veteran Leads Industry Transformation Driven by AI 'Smart Engine'

(Scene: In mid-July 2025, in the intelligent production workshop of Antai Textile in Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu, Huang Chang, the production department manager, is staring at the jumping data flow on the central control screen. The green indicator on the screen showing 'Color accuracy error ≤ 0.5% for Colored Acrylic Strip Production Line 3' is particularly eye-catching. At this moment, Li Xiong, the marketing department manager, walks in with a meeting document just brought back from Guangzhou. Their conversation reveals the story of how this textile enterprise, rooted in the industry for 32 years, continues to lead in the transformation.)

"Manager Huang, just back from the Guangzhou Artificial Intelligence Conference, the biggest feeling is: the 'smart engine' of the textile industry is really running," Li Xiong puts the conference manual on the console, points to one page, and says, "Look, now downstream brands are all talking about 'flexible production' and 'rapid response'. The 'AI color matching + small-batch customization' colored acrylic strips we launched in the first half of the year just ride this wave."

Manager Huang nods with a smile, swiping a curve on the screen with his fingertips: "Exactly. Take the batch of fancy yarn orders we rushed for Sunbur Fashion last week. Previously, manual color matching required at least 3 days for sampling. Now, the AI system can generate optimal process parameters in 2 hours based on the color card data they provided. Production Line 3 runs 24 hours a day, and the small-batch delivery of 500 kilograms was completed in 3 days." He pauses, with the pride of a technical person in his tone, "This was unimaginable ten years ago – when we first established the factory in 1993, acrylic strip color matching relied entirely on senior craftsmen 'judging color by eye and proportioning by experience'. Now, in the workshop, there are 20 production lines. From raw material proportioning to yarn formation, AI monitors the entire process, and even fly waste detection uses machine vision. The defect rate has decreased by 40% compared to last year."

The confidence in this technological upgrading exactly echoes the industry consensus of 'AI reshaping textile production logic' at the Guangzhou Artificial Intelligence Conference on July 15. As an acrylic yarn enterprise that laid out intelligent transformation earlier in China, Antai Textile has collaborated with universities to develop textile AI systems since 2020. Now, it has not only achieved full-process digitalization of acrylic strip and acrylic yarn production but also formed unique advantages in the field of colored acrylic strips – through AI algorithm optimization of dye proportioning, it can accurately reproduce more than 1,600 Pantone colors, with color fastness reaching above national standard level 4, making it the 'color partner' of many downstream brands.

"The demand changes of downstream brands are more direct than data," Li Xiong pulls out the market report on his phone, "Look at Sunbur Fashion. Its net profit in the first half of the year is expected to be 35 million yuan, with main funds continuing to flow in. Their purchasing manager told me last week, 'Now consumers don't like wearing the same clothes. If our dresses use your slub fancy yarn, the conversion rate in the live broadcast room can increase by 15%'." What he is talking about is exactly the differentiated products that Antai Textile has focused on in recent years – relying on 30 years of acrylic processing experience, the company has developed fancy yarns such as loop yarn, knot yarn, and slub yarn. With the characteristics of 'fluffy hand feel and unique style', they have entered the supply chain of many domestic leading casual wear brands.

Behind the keen market sense is a deep insight into industry trends. Li Xiong admits that at the beginning of the year, the team noticed that with the recovery of consumption, clothing brands are shifting from 'large-scale homogenization' to 'small-batch and multi-variety', so they quickly adjusted the product strategy: reducing the minimum order quantity for customized colored acrylic strips from 500 kilograms to 200 kilograms, and launching the '72-hour rapid sampling' service at the same time. "In the past six months, the order volume of our fancy yarns has increased by 35% year-on-year, of which 60% are brand customers like Sunbur Fashion. What they want is the design sense of 'unique to us'."

And what supports all this, in addition to technology, is talent. The lively scene of the Urumqi Textile Special Recruitment Fair on July 19 reminds Li Xiong of the company's 'talent echelon plan'. "32 enterprises competing for 1,538 positions shows that the industry is making up for the talent shortage. Since 2018, we have cooperated with the College of Textile of Jiangnan University to build a 'training base' in the workshop. The 5 postgraduates who just joined this year are now working with the AI system debugging team on parameter optimization," Manager Huang adds, "As the old saying goes, 'textile depends on craftsmanship for a living', but now it depends on 'craftsmanship + data' – among our more than 300 employees, the technical R&D team accounts for over 20%, including many senior craftsmen who have been deeply engaged in the acrylic field for 20 years. They lead young people to transform experience into algorithms; this is the real 'mentorship'."

From erecting the first spinning spindle in Zhangjiagang Economic and Technological Development Zone in 1993 to now having an annual production capacity of over 10,000 tons and products covering more than 20 provinces and cities across the country, Antai Textile's 32 years are exactly a microcosm of China's textile industry transforming from 'scale-driven' to 'innovation-driven'. When Li Xiong and Manager Huang stand by the floor-to-ceiling window of the workshop, watching the truck loaded with colored acrylic strips drive towards the garment industrial park in the Yangtze River Delta, they know that this enterprise, which has always regarded 'fibers' as 'texture' and 'innovation' as 'needles and threads', is weaving a more vivid picture for the 'intelligent future' of the textile industry with each acrylic yarn.