The carding section may occupy only one segment of a nonwoven production line, yet it often dictates the maximum line speed and final web uniformity. At the recently concluded 19th China International Technical Textiles and Nonwovens Exhibition (CINTE26), technical discussions around carding intensified—several leading nonwoven manufacturers' process engineers lingered at carding equipment booths, discussing not prices but tooth geometry, settings, and web evenness at high speeds.
Exhibition Trend: From Standalone Machines to Systematic Solutions
CINTE26 was held at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre. As a benchmark event for the nonwovens sector in Asia-Pacific, this edition highlighted "technology exchange" and "high-end industrial transformation." Notably, the exhibition featured a dedicated zone for the 15th Five-Year Plan for technical textiles, directly aligning corporate exhibits with national industrial upgrade directions. Jinlun Card Clothing, a representative in the carding field, showcased its comprehensive carding solutions for the three mainstream processes—spunlace, air-through, and needle-punch—in this zone. The display was not a single product but a systematic configuration covering the entire fiber opening, carding, and web-forming process.
This shift from selling components to providing process solutions implies that equipment suppliers are now deeply involved in production-side process optimization. For nonwoven plants, mismatched settings, speeds, or card clothing selection in the carding stage can lead to neps at best or frequent downtime at worst. Jinlun's high-output, high-speed, high-quality solutions essentially respond to the industry's common anxiety about balancing efficiency and quality.
Industrial Impact: Carding Technology Upgrades Directly Affect Cost and Quality
The impact of carding technology progress on downstream is direct. In spunlace, for example, a 10% increase in line speed, if not matched by the carding stage, often results in a higher reject rate due to reduced web uniformity, offsetting capacity gains. This explains why executives and technical staff from Andritz, Anhui Jinchun, Shandong Yongxin, Jiangsu Huafeng, and other companies visited carding booths—they care less about how long a card clothing lasts and more about whether the entire carding system can support their capacity upgrade plans over the next three years.
Industry public data indicate that nonwoven production capacity has continued to expand, yet mid-to-low-end products face severe homogeneity and shrinking margins. High-end medical, filtration, automotive materials still rely on imported equipment and processes. As carding determines fiber orientation and web structure, breakthroughs in this area will directly affect the competitiveness of domestic nonwoven equipment in the high-end market. If Jinlun's solutions can truly help customers maintain web uniformity at high speeds, they offer a cost-effective alternative to imported systems.
Another signal worth noting is the establishment of the 15th Five-Year Plan special zone. Policy guidance clearly encourages technical textiles to advance toward high-performance and multifunctional directions, implying that R&D in carding technologies for high-end applications will gain more resource support in the coming years. For equipment makers, those who first master fiber protection and uniform control under high-speed carding will take the lead in the next equipment renewal cycle.