Fabric 2022: As soft as possible, so tough

Source: China Textile News

In 2022, the fabric industry in China will suffer a little, but there is no lack of highlight performance.

According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first three quarters of 2022, the industrial added value of textile enterprises above the designated size nationwide decreased by 0.4% year on year, the operating revenue increased by 3.1% year on year, and the total profit decreased by 23.6% year on year. Although the fabric industry in the middle and lower reaches of the industrial chain is running well in general, the pace of progress has slowed down significantly.

The fabric industry is tough. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of The Black Swan Effect, said: "Some things can benefit from shocks. When exposed to volatility, randomness, chaos and pressure, risk and uncertainty, they can thrive and grow." Every crisis hides opportunities. In order to dispel the clouds and fog in the process of industry reform, the fabric enterprises have a new idea of "open fight and secret fight". From innovative products to digital technology, from functionality to informatization, they are not willing to lag behind when they see the call for help

Innovative products emerge in endlessly

Under the background of intensified competitive pressure, innovation is still the key word of fabric enterprises.

If the sudden COVID-19 three years ago pushed the acceleration button for the research and development of antibacterial fabrics, the adjustment of epidemic prevention and control policies this year has made antibacterial fabrics "orange red".

In the second half of this year, the old fire of antibacterial fabric reignited. Soochow Securities pointed out that at present, 31 textile and clothing listed companies have deployed anti-virus and anti-bacterial patents and products.

Among the relevant enterprises, Shenzhen Annell Co., Ltd. is undoubtedly the most concerned by the market. Since the beginning of November this year, Annelle has received seven rounds of institutional research, and repeatedly mentioned the situation of "anti-virus and anti-bacterial" fabrics in the research records, For example, "the company's exclusive anti-virus and antibacterial fabric can disinfection and sterilization enveloped viruses and various bacteria, fungi, etc." "The electron beam grafting technology has the characteristics of broad-spectrum, long-term effectiveness and safety, which is effective for all enveloped viruses, bacteria, fungi, even if the virus mutates" "The company is currently building an anti-virus and antibacterial fabric production line, which is expected to be mass produced early next year" "At present, we have negotiated with many enterprises such as adult clothing, medical health, hospital sense, cleaning, school uniforms, etc."

The products have not been mass produced yet, but Shandong Ruyi Technology Group Co., Ltd. is also the first to see the stock price soar. The patent specification of Ruyi Group's anti-bacterial and anti-virus machine washable wool worsted fabric shows that its fabric is characterized by the preparation of graphene wool worsted fabric, functional waterborne polyurethane lotion and silver ion anti-bacterial and anti-virus layer respectively in the inner layer, middle layer and outer layer of the fabric, and claims that the surface material not only has safe and permanent anti-bacterial and anti-virus functions, but also has far-infrared and anti-static functions through the interaction of internal and external three-layer mechanisms.

Zhongwang Fabric Co., Ltd. also said on the interactive platform that the company had applied for the patent of "a kind of antifouling and anti-virus thermal fabric" this year. At present, the antifouling and anti-virus fabric of Zhongwang Fabric has obtained a patent certificate in July 2022, and is currently in the process of commercialization.

The elastic fabric market also contains unlimited business opportunities.

As a high-tech enterprise specializing in outdoor sports and urban sports fabrics, Jiangsu Sanfeng Special Materials Technology Co., Ltd. adheres to scientific and technological innovation. It is understood that the ice feeling Vita fabric launched by the company this year has been widely recognized by the market.

Wu Wanyu, the manager of the company, introduced that the fabric is made of nylon coated spandex, with its own cooling gene, which is thin, silky, feels good, and has ultra-high elasticity. It recovers efficiently after stretching, improving the stretching ability during exercise. This fabric is also combined with the titanium muscle bubble bionic process independently developed by Sanfeng, which allows the human body to directly remove moisture through the spiral channel during exercise, making the exercise "breathing". It can be used for skin clothing, jackets, light down jackets, etc., to achieve comfortable and sustainable exercise.

Jinan Fuehrer Knitting Co., Ltd. is actively grasping the fashion trend of knitted fabrics and accelerating its development towards functionality, fashion and innovation. This year, the company introduced graphene Modal silver plated spandex undershirt. This fabric is not only elastic, but also fine, smooth, comfortable and close to the skin. It has high moisture absorption, moisture conductivity and air permeability, and can resist bacteria, ultraviolet rays and static electricity. The relevant person in charge of the company said: "The fabrics with high added value can not only meet the needs of clothing brands at a higher level, but also help us obtain higher returns."

Shaoxing Ruicai Textile Co., Ltd. has a professional fabric development team and cooperates closely with Donghua University and domestic and foreign textile institutions to continuously launch fashionable fabrics. The company's first product this year is cotton brocade elastic satin fabric. This fabric is made of 80 combed long staple cotton and nylon satin. The surface of the fabric has elegant and advanced luster, soft feel and fine texture. The addition of spandex brings good elasticity, which is suitable for high-end shirts and dresses with elegant urban style.

"In the current market, fabric enterprises should focus on solving the pain points of consumers in product development, show the care of products for consumers from the subtle aspects, focus on subdividing areas, and enhance competitiveness." Yang Jingxiang, the general manager of the company, believes that the elastic fabric market is still promising, fabric enterprises need to continue to innovate, and need to design the color, material, style, and function of fabrics according to the scene application, Better meet the personalized needs of consumers.

Enterprises welcome technology "foreign aid"

With the increasing popularity of the concept of meta universe, many fabric enterprises have also taken "digital action", harvesting new development and new opportunities for enterprises.

Lu Jianping, the general manager of Haining Tianyi Textile Co., Ltd., advocates that the development of the enterprise should be coordinated with the natural environment, reduce the environmental load from the design source, increase the use of degradable and renewable fiber materials such as bamboo, cuprammonia and acetic acid, advocate the concept of "environment-friendly dyeing and finishing", and apply the "air washing" technology to fabric finishing, which reduces the residual organic silicon in the human body and the environment, bringing a touch of green to the fashion industry.

He said: "Every year, enterprises will research and develop thousands of new products, and each variety needs to produce 500 meters of sample cloth, but only 20% of fabrics will generate order conversion." To this end, Tianyi Textile introduced virtual fabric technology, integrating three core functions of pattern display, fabric effect simulation, and virtual sample clothing production, so that designers can make design modifications based on virtual effects, Thus, the use of fabrics in the traditional design process is minimized, and unnecessary resource consumption and carbon emissions are reduced. Lu Jianping said: "Through high-precision digital restoration of fabrics, we have improved the efficiency of development and design, saving the company about 50% of research and development costs."

This year, Jiangsu Huihong International Group Zhongtian Holding Co., Ltd. launched a series of new fabrics with the theme of "man and nature", which is also supported by digital technology. "Consumers not only require environment-friendly fabrics, but also pay attention to expressing nature through fabric design." The relevant person in charge of Jiangsu Huihong International Group Zhongtian Holding Co., Ltd. said that this requires enterprises to be more rich in design language. To this end, the company has set up a new textile and clothing digital editorial department to visualize feathers, bark, flowers and other elements on the virtual fabric, expressing the idea of pursuing environment-friendly.

In addition, fabric enterprises also welcomed a lot of technical "foreign aid" this year.

In the workshop of Hengshen Holding Group, the quality inspector is no longer a front-line textile worker, but an AI quality inspector. The product does not pass the standard, and no manual inspection is required. It can be known with the industrial camera deployed at the front end.

"In the past, the company's quality inspection workers mainly adopted the working mode of 'eyes+flashlights', which is not only inefficient, but also likely to damage their eyes after a long time of work. Now, the company's' AA rate' of the company's products has increased by nearly two percentage points after the visual inspection system built by the company in cooperation with Baidu was' on duty '." Xiao Weimin, director of the chemical fiber sector information department of Hengshen Holding Group, said, The quality inspection problems that have puzzled the company for many years have been basically solved.

In addition to Baidu, Alibaba has developed AI algorithm in recent years, which can complete the quality inspection of mainstream fabrics such as chemical fiber, cotton, jeans and leather. Huawei has also created a smart textile inspection joint solution to serve the upgrading of the automatic production line in the whole process of fabric quality inspection

The efforts of "big factories" have been recognized by textile enterprises. Xiao Weimin pointed out that the visual inspection system built by Baidu has effectively solved the problem that manual inspection cannot maintain the consistency of inspection quality. Through deep machine learning, AI technology, image recognition technology and 5G network transmission, it has realized the centralized integration of product appearance inspection, thereby improving the product qualification rate.

"After the introduction of Baidu visual inspection technology in the workshop, the artificial benefit has increased by 70%." Li Feng, the marketing director of Anqing Fengzhao Printing and Dyeing Co., Ltd., revealed that after the system was put into use, the working pressure of workers was greatly reduced, and the product excellence rate was expected to increase from 95% to more than 98%, and the industrial value and economic benefits were significantly improved.

In August of this year, the Ministry of Science and Technology and other six departments jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Accelerating Scene Innovation and Promoting High Quality Economic Development with High Level Application of Artificial Intelligence, especially focusing on promoting the deep integration of artificial intelligence and the real economy. This undoubtedly laid a more solid foundation for the cooperation between textile enterprises and "big factories".

Qiao Yanjin, director of the Productivity Promotion Department of the China Textile Industry Federation, pointed out that the current digital transformation of the textile industry is moving from a single link and subdivided fields to an industrial ecology. In the "Fourteenth Five Year Plan", the China Textile Industry Federation stressed that it is necessary to continuously strengthen the deep integration of industrial Internet, big data, artificial intelligence, industrial robots, blockchain and other key technologies for intelligent manufacturing applications in the textile industry, and use advanced and applicable technologies and scientific management tools to accelerate the digital transformation and upgrading of enterprises.

Strong export of high-end products

The fabric enterprises in 2022 will also gain a lot from their investment in innovative products and digital technology.

According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first three quarters of 2022, printing and dyeing enterprises above designated size achieved an operating income of 229.639 billion yuan, an increase of 8.07% year on year; The total profit was 8.969 billion yuan, up 1.07% year on year. The export data is even more gratifying. According to the statistics of China Customs, the export volume of eight categories of printing and dyeing products in the first three quarters of 2022 is 22.529 billion meters, a year-on-year increase of 9.04%; The export value was 23.9 billion US dollars, up 16.91% year on year.

Under the influence of multiple adverse factors, these achievements are obviously hard won.

In the face of market fluctuations, Chen Yulin, chairman of Suzhou Hanta Textile Technology Co., Ltd., appears very calm. The company's export market accounts for 60%, mainly providing fabrics for international sports brands such as Nike and Adidas. "The orders in the first half of this year have increased compared with last year. One reason is that enterprises have increased their investment in research and development since a few years ago, and have made a transition to low-carbon and high-end through scientific and technological innovation. While developing degradable materials, they also continue to improve their outdoor and cold proofing functions." In Chen Yulin's view, high-end production capacity will eventually remain at home, and the future international competition will be the competition for technology-based talents.

Zhejiang Xinmen Textile Co., Ltd. interprets details with practical actions, which is the key to success. Zhao Chunqian, the general manager of the company, said that the company did not let go of the details of each link, strictly controlled the whole process of raw materials, design, process, inspection, packaging, etc., established a strict quality supervision system and a sound supply chain coordination mechanism, and brought customers a better product and service experience.

"The frequency of new products in the company is not high, but the research and development of each product will be carried out from the perspective of customer needs and consumers to ensure the optimization of parameters and performance in all aspects." Zhao Chunqian said that, with the ability to control details, the company also further strengthened cooperation with international high-end brands and large comprehensive enterprises such as Calvin Klein, Jesse Penny, Samsung Products to consolidate the enterprise's foreign trade market.

"We carry out a series of innovations from top to bottom, such as fine management, technical improvement and product upgrading." Yu Shaobo, the general manager of Zhejiang Baofang Printing and Dyeing Co., Ltd., said that innovation drives development. The company strives for change and innovation in new products. One of the polyester yarn products has improved the process technology to improve the color yield and saturation of the product color. Although the price has risen by 15%, it is favored by the market.

There is no doubt that the export structure of China's fabric industry is changing, the export of high-end products is strong, the trade structure continues to optimize, and continues to climb up the value chain. In order to promote China's foreign trade enterprises to "go global" as soon as possible and actively expand export business, various stable foreign trade policies continued to increase.

On September 13, the executive meeting of the State Council clearly proposed to support the expansion of the market with insurance orders, and to strengthen the service guarantee of outbound exhibition, negotiation and other services. On September 14, the 2022 national foreign trade teleconference held by the Ministry of Commerce proposed that foreign trade enterprises should be unblocked to grasp the order channel, support foreign trade enterprises to ensure production and performance, and cultivate new business forms, new models and new growth points of foreign trade.

Major textile foreign trade provinces are also taking active action. In the same month, Haining City, Jiaxing City, Zhejiang Province, the first group to charter a plane to take orders to the sea ended the trip of Osaka International Daily Necessities Exhibition in Japan. During the exhibition, Haining Enterprises exhibited more than 3800 exhibition samples, received more than 400 customers, held nearly 200 business negotiations, and the intended transaction amount reached 5.1 million dollars.

Although the current global demand is not strong as a whole, thanks to the measures taken by the fabric industry to actively encourage enterprises to go out to participate in the conference and take orders to guarantee orders, China's textile industry exports are expected to maintain a good growth trend.

The China Printing and Dyeing Industry Association said that, in the next step, relevant enterprises should pay close attention to the changes in the international situation and trade environment, take market demand as the guide, constantly optimize the production and operation mode, actively expand the diversified market, and continuously improve the enterprise efficiency and market competitiveness.