Antai Textile: A 30-Year Acrylic Fiber Specialist, Leading the Sports & Outdoor Yarn Track with Market Acumen and Production Resilience

In the textile industrial cluster of Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu Province, the steady and orderly hum of machines fills Antai Textile's factory buildings. This textile enterprise, rooted here since 1993, is weaving a development story that resonates with industry trends through the yarn shuttling in its workshops. In the summer of 2025, as the acrylic blended yarn industry marches toward a market scale of 2.5 million tons with an 8.2% annual compound growth rate, and demand surges in niche areas like sports leisure and outdoor equipment, on the desk of Li Xiong, Marketing Manager of Antai Textile, lies not just an industry analysis report, but a product layout map that precisely captures the market pulse.

"Look at this set of data," Li Xiong pointed to the annotation in the report that "demand for sports leisure apparel fabrics increased by 12% year-on-year," his tone reflecting keen market insight. "The warmth, weather resistance, and lightness of acrylic yarn make it a natural 'ideal partner' for outdoor equipment. And young people's pursuit of personalized clothing has made colored acrylic tops and fancy yarns a 'hot commodity' in design." This judgment is not unfounded – as an enterprise deeply rooted in the acrylic fiber field for 30 years, Antai Textile has long established a rapid response mechanism from market trends to product implementation. Earlier this year, while the industry was still observing the popular direction of functional fabrics for sportswear, Li Xiong's marketing team, together with the R&D department, launched high-loft acrylic blended yarns for scenarios such as outdoor jacket linings and ski suit insulation layers. To meet the "aesthetic needs" of urban light outdoor wear, colored acrylic tops use eco-friendly dyeing processes with preset color fastness of grade 4 or higher, eliminating the need for downstream enterprises to re-dye. Meanwhile, fancy yarns have been developed into 12 texture styles such as slub and loop, adapting to the design inspiration of trendy brand sweatshirts.

The implementation of these products is inseparable from the solid support of the production end. In the production workshop, Factory Director Huang of the Production Department was staring at the jumping parameters on the central control screen, which showed that the conversion rate of acrylonitrile raw materials was stable at 98.5% – nearly 3 percentage points higher than the industry average. "Last week, the capacity utilization rate of the acrylonitrile industry was just 76.2%. As soon as the news came out that Jilin Petrochemical's new 260,000-ton plant would start production at the end of the month, we adjusted our raw material procurement rhythm," explained Factory Director Huang. Antai Textile's intelligent production system has achieved data interconnection with upstream suppliers, enabling dynamic adjustment of feeding plans based on changes in acrylonitrile inventory (current domestic factory inventory is 45,800 tons, a slight increase of 3,000 tons from last week). This not only avoids cost risks caused by fluctuations in raw material prices but also ensures a stable supply of 300 tons of acrylic tops per day. More importantly, the "low-temperature dyeing acrylic top production line" upgraded last year in the workshop has reduced energy consumption by 15%, further highlighting the cost advantage of colored acrylic tops while meeting environmental requirements.

This combination of "market acumen + production resilience" has allowed Antai Textile to establish a firm foothold amid the wave of increasing industry concentration. From the launch of its first spinning machine in 1993 to now being an acrylic fiber product supplier with 8 intelligent production lines and an annual capacity of over 50,000 tons, Antai Textile's growth trajectory embodies a commitment to technological R&D. In the laboratory, researchers are testing a new generation of "antibacterial acrylic yarn," which implants antibacterial factors during the fiber spinning stage to give the yarn continuous bacteriostatic effects – precisely targeting the demand for "functional upgrading" of outdoor equipment. Long-term cooperation with multiple domestic leading sports brands further confirms the market recognition of its products: nearly 60% of the lining yarn for a well-known brand's winter ski suit series this year comes from Antai; even emerging brands focusing on the "light outdoor lifestyle" have listed colored acrylic tops as the designated raw material for autumn and winter knitwear.

Faced with possible price fluctuations in the acrylic fiber market in July, Li Xiong appeared calm. "The rise in crude oil prices in the first half of the year did push up costs, but we reduced unit energy consumption by optimizing processes; speculative restocking by downstream enterprises led to a 30% inventory decline, but Antai's 'production based on sales' model keeps inventory within a reasonable range." He mentioned that the company has recently reached a strategic cooperation intention with Jilin Petrochemical, and after the new plant is put into production, it will further stabilize raw material supply through direct supply. In Factory Director Huang's production workshop, a new batch of "skin-friendly acrylic tops" for autumn outdoor children's clothing has entered the trial production stage – by adjusting fiber fineness, this yarn increases softness by 20%, perfectly aligning with the ultimate pursuit of "comfort and safety" in the children's clothing market.

From 1993 to 2025, Antai Textile's spindles have rotated for more than three decades. As the market wave of acrylic blended yarn surges, this enterprise has proven with 30 years of industry accumulation: true industry participants are never trend followers, but companions who weave value with every thread at the intersection of market demand and technological innovation. The machines in the workshop are still running, and the next batch of acrylic yarn destined for outdoor equipment factories is about to roll off the production line. Carrying the warmth of Antai Textile, they will enter mountains, fields, and cities, becoming a link connecting industry and life.