In recent days, in Yangkou Town, Rudong County, the Jiujiujiu ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) fiber project is being built at full speed. “This is the company’s flagship product — the Phase IV expansion project for UHMWPE fiber, which adds 5,280 tons of new production capacity. All the plant buildings are now complete, equipment installation will take place in the fourth quarter, and production is expected by the end of the year,” said Chen Bing, Executive Deputy General Manager of Jiangsu Jiujiujiu Technology Co., Ltd. The company seized the opportunity to accelerate construction and truly achieved “land acquired, construction started, project completed and production launched — all within the same year”.
After its restructuring in 2002, Jiangsu Jiujiujiu Technology Co., Ltd. went through two transformations — from single-product fertilizer production to fine chemical production, and then to the R&D, production and sales of new energy and new material products. “UHMWPE fiber is one of the strongest fibers available today, reaching 15 times the strength of high-quality steel and nearly 10 times that of ordinary chemical fibers. This product used to be monopolized by foreign companies, with only a few companies in the Netherlands, the United States and Japan holding the production technology,” Chen Bing said. In 2013 the company launched product R&D, brought in relevant technical talent and built close industry-academia-research partnerships with universities and institutes such as East China University of Science and Technology, Qingdao University and Beijing University of Chemical Technology. It absorbed, improved and upgraded the original technology and combined it with its existing advantages in chemical production, achieving production the following year. Today the company has focused on UHMWPE fiber, a niche in new materials, for more than seven years, becoming a national Manufacturing Single Champion product enterprise and a provincial-level specialized and sophisticated “little giant” enterprise that integrates product R&D, production and sales.
Targeting high-performance composite materials for four major application areas — safety protection, defense and military equipment, marine industry and home textiles — the company’s Phase I project produces 1,600 tons of UHMWPE fiber a year. In recent years, as the market gradually opened up and the technology matured, the Phase II and Phase III projects expanded production capacity to 15,000 tons. “Since the beginning of this year the company has been producing at full capacity, with total sales in the first half exceeding RMB 2 billion, of which UHMWPE fiber alone accounted for nearly RMB 500 million. The product’s market share has now reached 35%, and full-year sales are expected to reach RMB 900 million,” Chen Bing said, adding that as application areas expand the market keeps growing and the company is opening up new fields such as automotive lightweighting and mobile phone casings.
Besides the Phase IV expansion project under construction, the XINGI TECH UHMWPE fiber project in the Yangkougang Economic Development Zone is also being stepped up. It is understood that the project started construction on 30 July and is expected to go into production by the end of next year. Once completed it will produce 20,000 tons of UHMWPE fiber a year, bringing the company’s total annual output to 40,000 tons as it works to build a globally specialized specialty fiber production plant.
Reprinted from Rudong Daily