CINTE26 Insight: How Carding Technology Seizes the High-End Nonwovens Market? A Close Look at Jinlun's Approach

When the nonwovens industry collectively shifts toward the 'high-end league', the first pressure point is not the finished product, but the carding stage hidden mid-production line. The signal from the 19th China International Technical Textiles and Nonwovens Exhibition (CINTE26) is clear: whoever balances high output, high speed, and high quality will seize pricing power in the next capacity race.

Exhibition Trend: From 'Scale Narrative' to 'Technology Narrative'

Held at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre, CINTE26, as a benchmark event in Asia-Pacific nonwovens, often indicates the direction of technology investment for the next two years through its zone settings and exhibitor moves. Unlike previous years, the industry's focus is no longer on how many new lines have been added, but on how to push speed, width, and product stability of existing lines up a notch without increasing civil construction costs.

At the exhibition, Jinlun Needle Cloth's carding solutions were built around this pain point. Targeting the three mainstream processes of spunlace, hot-air, and needle-punch, the product portfolio is not a simple stack of parameters, but a 'one-process-one-solution' logic based on the differentiated requirements of each process on fiber orientation, randomness, and basis weight uniformity. This shift from 'selling parts' to 'selling process understanding' is precisely the rarest capability in the current supply chain.

Also noteworthy was the density of interactions at the booth. Technical leaders from Andritz, Anhui Jinchun, Shandong Yongxin, Jiangsu Huafeng, Huafu Group and other leading enterprises visited for in-depth exchanges, with topics centered on product adaptation, process optimization, and line efficiency. This indicates that dialogues between equipment suppliers and product manufacturers are shifting from 'buy-sell relationships' to 'joint tackling', and carding—a seemingly traditional process—is becoming the most intensive technical interface for collaboration.

Industry Logic: Why Carding Has Become a 'Bottleneck'

The high-end transformation of nonwovens appears to be a competition in raw materials and finished product quality, but in essence, it is a competition in precision across every step: carding, lapping, and bonding. Take spunlace lines for example: when line speed climbs from 150 m/min toward over 200 m/min, the stability of needle cloth in gripping, transferring, and releasing fibers directly determines whether defects like cloud marks or holes appear. This is why Jinlun positions 'high output, high speed, high quality' as the core coordinate of its solution design.

From a cost structure perspective, carding equipment accounts for a limited share of nonwovens production costs, but its impact on yield is leveraged. If a carding solution can increase the A-grade ratio by two percentage points, for an enterprise with an annual output of ten thousand tons, it means reducing hundreds of tons of waste each year—translating into real profit improvement. Therefore, downstream enterprises no longer compare only unit prices when evaluating suppliers, but comprehensively consider the responsiveness of technical services and the depth of understanding of process pain points.

Jinlun's innovative exhibits being placed in the '15th Five-Year' special zone for technical textiles in Hall W5 is itself a policy indicator. Incorporating cutting-edge carding technology into the national industrial planning framework implies that nonwovens equipment upgrading has been recognized as a foundational project supporting strategic emerging industries. For equipment and component enterprises, this is both a market opportunity and a ticket to participate in standard-setting.

Practical Advice

For Buyers - Advance the selection of carding equipment to the design stage of new lines, conducting joint process simulations with suppliers to avoid costly retrofits after commissioning. - Establish dual evaluation metrics of 'needle cloth cost per ton of fabric' and 'A-grade ratio', rather than only looking at purchase price; require suppliers to provide comparative test data under the same process and raw materials. - Pay attention to the '15th Five-Year' technology direction revealed at exhibitions, and prioritize carding solutions that align with policy-supported areas (such as high-end medical and filtration materials) to gain potential project application or tax incentives.

For Exporters - When exporting nonwovens equipment or products, include energy consumption and speed data of the carding stage as technical annexes in contracts to strengthen technical persuasion in negotiations with overseas clients. - Leverage exhibition platforms like CINTE to establish joint R&D mechanisms with core equipment suppliers, customizing carding parameters for target markets' fiber characteristics (e.g., recycled polyester in Southeast Asia, wood pulp composites in Europe) to form differentiated selling points. - Monitor new standards for technical textiles in destination countries (e.g., flushability, biodegradability), and verify early whether carding processes affect final product compliance to avoid trade barriers.