Yizheng Chemical Fiber, officially named Sinopec Yizheng Chemical Fiber Co., Ltd., stands as a world-class modern industrial base covering 10 square kilometers along the Yangtze River in Yizheng City, Jiangsu Province. As a super-large-scale production base for chemical fibers and raw materials, the enterprise boasts a glorious 45-year development history and has long underpinned China’s textile and new material industry development.
The development of Yizheng Chemical Fiber dates back to 1978, when China initiated the project to tackle the nationwide shortage of clothing supplies by building a large-scale professional chemical fiber production base. In 1990, the first and second phases of the Yizheng Chemical Fiber project were fully completed and put into operation, forming an annual production capacity of 500,000 tons of chemical fibers and supporting raw materials. At that time, its output accounted for one-third of China’s total synthetic fiber production and half of the country’s polyester fiber output, equivalent to one-eighth of China’s total cotton production.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the iconic Dacron fabric produced by Yizheng Chemical Fiber featured a crisp, wrinkle-resistant texture. It provided sufficient raw materials for at least one new set of clothes per person nationwide every year, completely ending the era of rationed fabric supply and resolving the prominent conflict between grain and cotton land occupation in China.
Statistics show that over the past 45 years, Yizheng Chemical Fiber has accumulated a total polyester product output of more than 54 million tons, equal to the yield of over 1 billion mu of high-quality cotton fields. The massive output can produce enough garments to provide 108 sets of Dacron clothing for every person in China, laying a solid foundation for the prosperity of China’s textile industry.
Beyond its outstanding production capacity, Yizheng Chemical Fiber is a pioneering innovator in China’s chemical fiber industry. Its technical center is among the first 40 state-recognized enterprise technology centers in China, equipped with a nationally accredited analysis and testing center, Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of High-Performance Fibers, and a professional synthetic fiber processing and application center.
In December 2000, Yizheng Chemical Fiber commissioned China’s first domestically developed 100,000-ton/year polyester plant. The landmark project successfully broke long-term foreign technological monopolies, blazed a trail for the localization of China’s polyester plant construction, and significantly lowered the technical barriers and investment costs for domestic polyester projects.
Currently, Yizheng Chemical Fiber has fully independent intellectual property rights for ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fiber and para-aramid fiber. Its high-performance polyethylene fiber adopts China’s exclusive dry-process technology, maintaining unique technical advantages in the industry. The differential rate of the company’s polyester products exceeds 99%, ranking at the leading domestic level in product quality and market competitiveness.
At the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic broke out globally, triggering an extreme shortage of melt-blown fabric, the core raw material for medical masks. Entrusted with an urgent national mission, Yizheng Chemical Fiber launched an emergency cross-industry production project for melt-blown fabric from scratch.
Under normal circumstances, the construction and commissioning of a single melt-blown fabric production line takes at least one year. However, Yizheng Chemical Fiber completed the first production line in merely 35 days and built a total of 12 production lines in 76 days, setting a remarkable speed record for Chinese manufacturing. Upon full operation, these lines can produce 18 tons of high-quality melt-blown fabric daily, supporting the daily output increase of 18 million disposable medical masks and strongly backing national pandemic prevention and control work.
In recent years, Yizheng Chemical Fiber has vigorously promoted intelligent digital transformation. In September 2025, its innovative “Yihua 5G Intelligent Fiber Factory” was successfully selected into the 2025 5G Factory List released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, marking a crucial milestone in the company’s digital and intelligent upgrading journey.
Through the collaborative deployment of 5G industrial private networks, time-sensitive networks and full-optical industrial networks, Yizheng Chemical Fiber has built a high-speed, stable and intelligent new industrial network infrastructure. The 5G-powered AGV automatic filament bucket handling system realizes fully unmanned and autonomous material transportation throughout the production process. Relying on ultra-low-latency 5G data transmission, the real-time condition monitoring of key pumps and machines enables intelligent equipment diagnosis and automatic early warning, greatly improving operational efficiency and production safety.
During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Yizheng Chemical Fiber plans to invest approximately 15 billion RMB in key industrial upgrading projects, including a 3-million-ton annual PTA production project, an 800,000-ton intelligent staple fiber project, a 1.5-million-ton new bottle-grade chip project, and a 360,000-ton PBT and degradable material project. Upon full completion, the company’s asset scale will be doubled, equivalent to rebuilding a brand-new Yizheng Chemical Fiber.
In April 2024, the world’s largest single-unit PTA production project — Yizheng Chemical Fiber’s 3-million-ton PTA project, was officially put into trial operation. Adopting advanced energy-saving, environmentally friendly and short-process technologies, the new plant consumes only one-third of the energy of traditional old devices, fully demonstrating the company’s outstanding achievements in green and low-carbon transformation.
From solving China’s basic clothing supply dilemma and undertaking critical pandemic supply tasks, to achieving continuous technological breakthroughs in advanced new materials, Yizheng Chemical Fiber’s 45-year development journey serves as a vivid microcosm of China’s industrial upgrading. Driven by technological innovation, the time-honored enterprise is advancing steadily on the path of green and low-carbon development, striving toward the strategic goal of becoming a domestically leading and world-class professional manufacturer of synthetic fibers and new materials.
