Antai Textile: Leading Green and Intelligent Transformation to Seize New Opportunities in the 15-Billion-Yuan Acrylic Fiber Market
The early morning sun shines through the office building windows of Zhangjiagang Antai Textile, casting light on the industry report spread out by Li Xiong, the Marketing Department Manager. "The market size of dyed acrylic solid fabric will exceed 15 billion yuan by 2025" — this striking data prompts him to call the Production Department. On the other end of the line, Factory Director Huang is leading technicians to adjust the proportion parameters of a new batch of bio-based leveling agents. In the workshop, intelligent production lines are operating at high speed with various acrylic sliver, and these vibrant fibers will soon become functional fabrics for sports brands and high-quality yarns for high-end business suits.
As an enterprise rooted in the textile hometown since 1993, Antai Textile has witnessed the entire process of China's acrylic fiber industry from quantitative to qualitative change. When the "14th Five-Year Plan" promoted structural adjustments in the industry, this established enterprise had already, with its keen insight into market trends, shifted its R&D focus to green environmental protection and intelligent manufacturing. "Look at our colored acrylic sliver production line," Factory Director Huang introduces, leading visitors through the digital workshop and pointing to the real-time energy consumption monitoring screen. "Through the transformation of high-efficiency polymerization technology and the upgrade of low-VOC emission processes, energy consumption per unit product has decreased by 18% compared with three years ago, which exactly meets the industry transformation needs under the 'dual carbon' strategy."
In Antai Textile's product exhibition hall, rolls of acrylic-cotton colored yarns are displaying unique texture under the lights. Li Xiong picks up a bunch of deep-sea blue yarn and explains: "This is a special yarn developed for automotive interior customers, using a new environmentally friendly leveling technology, with color fastness reaching above level 4.5. Now the order volume of such high-end functional yarns has increased by 30% year-on-year, which exactly confirms the trend mentioned in the report that 'the automotive interior sector contributes over 60% of the market share'." It is understood that relying on an annual production capacity of 850,000 tons (against the backdrop of China's acrylic fiber industry accounting for over 45% of global total output), Antai Textile's core products such as acrylic yarn and acrylic sliver have covered more than 300 domestic clothing brands and entered the Southeast Asian home textile market through cross-border e-commerce channels.
"From the production of a single acrylic yarn when the factory was established in 1993 to now forming a product matrix of six major series including colored acrylic sliver and fancy yarn, we have always followed market demand," Li Xiong says, looking at the newly built R&D center in the factory area. This R&D base, with an investment of 20 million yuan, is equipped with an internationally advanced leveling agent performance testing laboratory and is currently collaborating with Jiangnan University to develop bio-based leveling agents. "News reports say this market size has reached 15 billion yuan with an average annual growth of 8.5%, and we must seize this opportunity." In the sample book in his hand, the acrylic-wool blended fabric produced with the new leveling agent is being favored by multiple luxury brands for their autumn and winter collections.
In front of the intelligent warehousing system in the workshop, robotic arms are neatly stacking packaged acrylic products. These orders, to be shipped to Guangdong, include both high-elastic acrylic yarn for yoga clothes and flame-retardant acrylic sliver for high-end sofas. "Now customers not only pay attention to color and hand feel but also value environmental indicators and the carbon neutrality of the production process," Factory Director Huang says, pulling up customer feedback records on his phone. "Last month, European merchants came for a factory inspection and particularly affirmed our reclaimed water reuse system and photovoltaic power supply project; these green investments are becoming market competitiveness."
As the sun sets, Li Xiong receives the monthly report from the cross-border e-commerce platform in his email, showing that the sales volume of fancy yarn in the North American market has increased by 42% year-on-year. He recalls the discussion with Factory Director Huang in the morning: "Next, we need to expand the application scope of bio-based leveling agents to the entire acrylic product line, allowing more customers to enjoy the dividends of green textiles." In this era where the annual scale of the acrylic fiber industry reaches 35 billion yuan, Antai Textile, with 30 years of professional accumulation, is weaving the innovation story of traditional textile enterprises on the path of green and intelligent transformation.