Juancheng firms go high-tech to lift production

At Yongchuang Textile Co Ltd in Juancheng county, East China's Shandong province, company manager Wu Congqiang is confident about the firm's booming business this year.

Inside the workshops, a new type of textile processing equipment was running rhythmically on Feb 24, with rolls of yarn and bundles of woven fabrics automatically coming offline. The roar of the machines, intertwined with the busy figures of workers, created a busy but orderly production scene.

"At present, we have signed orders enough for us to work for three months. In order to fill the orders on schedule, our employees have been working long hours, and we didn't stop during the Spring Festival holiday," he said.

Set up in 2016 with a total investment of 120 million yuan ($16.9 million), Yongchuang Textile has 35,000 combed yarn spindles and 25,000 air spun spindles, mainly producing 20-60 pure cotton yarns.

Its products are mainly sold to Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hebei and Guangdong provinces, occupying a good share of the domestic textile market.

However, fierce competition and fluctuations in raw material prices, as well as outdated equipment have brought considerable challenges to the company amid its development, Wu said.

"In the face of challenges, our company has taken innovation as a driving force and relied on high-tech to bolster our competitiveness," he said, noting that in 2023, the company boldly imported six advanced Italian winding machines — a key turning point for its progress.

"The new equipment helped us save a lot of manpower and lift production by 25 percent, allowing us to gain more market share and orders," added Wu.

Yongchuang Textile has also designed its strategies in dealing with risks and solving problems, Wu stressed, noting that on the one hand, the firm strengthened cooperation with upstream and downstream enterprises while focusing on talent cultivation and market monitoring to timely adjust product structure on the other hand.

Due to its outstanding market performance, innovation ability and social responsibility, Yongchuang Textile was recently awarded the title of "Industrial Economic Development Contribution Enterprise" by Juancheng county.

Strong support from local policies was also a great help, Wu said, noting that at the beginning of the Chinese New Year in 2025, Shi Cuiqin, deputy government head of Zuoying, came to Yongchuang Textile for an in-depth field research.

Shi said that in recent years, Zuoying has continuously improved its business environment, helping boost the development of local small and medium-sized enterprises.

Deng Zhaopeng, magistrate of Juancheng, said in January that the county plans to increase its regional GDP by some 6.5 percent and elevate the per capita disposable income of all residents by about 7 percent this year. Last year, the county saw its regional GDP hit 31 billion yuan ($4.36 billion) in 2024, a rise of 6.5 percent year-on-year.

Please contact the writer at hanjingyan@chinadaily.com.cn