As the nonwovens industry shifts from scale expansion to value competition, the carding process has become a decisive factor in production efficiency and product quality. The 19th China International Trade Fair for Technical Textiles and Nonwovens (CINTE26) signaled that equipment suppliers are no longer just selling machines—they are offering systematic carding logic for high-end nonwoven production.
Trade Show Trends: Equipment Makers Bet on High Output and High Quality
Held at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre, the fair covered the entire chain from raw materials and equipment to end products. Notably, many exhibitors emphasized resolving the traditional contradiction between 'high output' and 'high quality.' For carding equipment targeting the three mainstream nonwoven processes—spunlace, thermal bond, and needlepunch—leading suppliers showcased solutions that improve running speed while reducing fiber damage, directly addressing downstream demands for lower energy consumption per unit and better product consistency.
Jinlun Needle Cloth's carding solution at the fair exemplifies this trend. Its exhibit was not a single needle cloth product but a set of parameter-optimized carding packages for different process routes, designed to help lines increase speed while maintaining web uniformity and fiber orientation stability. This shift from selling components to selling process packages means equipment suppliers are deeply involved in customers' production management, evolving from vendors to technology partners.
Industrial Impact: How High-End Transformation Affects Procurement
During the fair, technical leaders from Andritz, Anhui Jinchun, Shandong Yongxin, Jiangsu Huafeng, Huafu Group, and other upstream and downstream enterprises visited the booth, engaging in discussions on product adaptation, process optimization, line efficiency, and technology iteration. These intensive face-to-face exchanges are essentially a collective rehearsal for the high-end path of nonwovens during the 15th Five-Year Plan period—in the new cycle, the extensive model of simply expanding capacity is unsustainable, and equipment upgrades and process micro-innovations will be the main levers for companies to build barriers.
Notably, Jinlun's innovative exhibits were selected for the W5 hall's special zone for technical textiles under the 15th Five-Year Plan. This detail reveals the confluence of policy orientation and market demand: the state's encouragement of high-end technical textiles, specifically in nonwovens, lands in application areas with strict requirements for fiber web structure, such as healthcare, filtration, and geotextiles. For equipment manufacturers, this means R&D investment must be closer to end-use applications rather than merely improving universal performance indicators.
For buyers, the logic of equipment selection is changing. In the past, the main criteria for evaluating a carding system were capacity and price; today, energy consumption, fiber damage rate, flexibility in changing product types, and after-sales response speed form a new evaluation matrix. Suppliers who can provide full-process data support and continuous process optimization services will gain stronger bargaining power in commercial negotiations.
Practical Recommendations
For Buyers - When evaluating equipment, request measured data specific to your main process (spunlace/thermal bond/needlepunch) rather than generic sample parameters. - Include 'process adaptation services' in the purchase contract, clearly defining debugging support and response time for parameter optimization after delivery. - Pay attention to equipment compatibility with differential fibers (e.g., bio-based, biodegradable materials) to reserve space for product line upgrades.
For Foreign Trade Enterprises - In technical documents for overseas clients, highlight equipment compliance with high-speed lines and energy consumption standards, supporting premium positioning with data. - Use insights from leading companies' process needs gathered at trade shows to develop differentiated products and avoid homogeneous price wars. - Focus on policy-supported segments under the 15th Five-Year Plan, and prepare early for export categories of high value-added nonwovens such as filtration and medical products.
The high-end transformation of the nonwovens industry is not a slogan but grows from every detail—from the tooth design of carding cloth to digital management of production lines. CINTE26 presents a slice of this systematic upgrade: when equipment makers refine products with a 'high-end game' mindset, the competitive dimension of the entire industrial chain rises accordingly.