China's textile industry secured two major honors at the 2025 National Science and Technology Awards, signaling an accelerating shift from scale-driven growth to technology-led dominance. The project 'Key Technologies for Green and Intelligent Manufacturing of the Polyester Fiber Industrial Chain,' led by Tongkun Group in collaboration with Donghua University and nine other institutions, won the First Prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award—the first time a full-chain technology for general-purpose fibers has achieved this top honor.
Technological Breakthrough: From 'Industrial Staple' to Self-Reliant System
Polyester fiber is the fundamental raw material of the textile industry. China produces 70% of the world's chemical fibers, with polyester fiber ranking first among all types. The project, spearheaded by Donghua University researcher Wang Huaping and deeply involving the team of Academician Zhu Meifang, achieved core breakthroughs in three dimensions after over a decade of collaborative research: green manufacturing, intelligent manufacturing, and service-oriented manufacturing.
- In green manufacturing: the project pioneered a PTA-PET direct-coupled low-carbon manufacturing model, developed environmentally friendly titanium-based catalysts and crude oil-based fiber oils, and established a full-lifecycle green standard, enabling a complete low-carbon production pathway.
- In intelligent manufacturing: it completed full-process automation upgrades, achieved large-scale domestic substitution of DCS control systems, and built an integrated quality and process control system.
- In service-oriented manufacturing: it created a 'multi-head, multi-tail' series-parallel composite polymerization technology platform, enabling customized production of differentiated polyester fiber products and agile multi-region collaborative manufacturing.
To date, the project has generated 76 authorized invention patents, 10 software copyrights, and 14 national and industry standards. An expert panel of academicians has assessed the overall technology as reaching the international leading level.
Industrial Impact: The Logic Behind 200 Billion Yuan in New Sales
This technological achievement is not just a laboratory exercise. According to publicly available industry data, the related technologies have been deployed in industrial bases in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Xinjiang, as well as in over ten enterprises, generating cumulative new sales of over 200 billion yuan, profits and taxes exceeding 10 billion yuan, and export earnings of 1.8 billion US dollars. For buyers and factories, this means further reductions in polyester fiber production costs, improved quality stability, and significant decreases in energy consumption and defect rates.
For Tongkun Group, the project also brought a demonstration effect: the company was selected as one of the first batch of national 'Zero-Waste Enterprise' cases, and was named a 'National Service-oriented Manufacturing Demonstration Enterprise' and a 'National Excellent-level Intelligent Manufacturing Demonstration Factory.' This reflects a policy trend that tightly links technological innovation with green transformation and intelligent manufacturing, potentially raising the industry's entry barriers in the future.
International Collaboration: From One-way Import to Two-way Empowerment
The same day also saw the announcement of the中华人民共和国 International Science and Technology Cooperation Award, granted to Professor Elsa Reichmanis of Lehigh University in the U.S. Since 2013, she has collaborated deeply with Donghua University's State Key Laboratory for Advanced Fiber Materials, co-training talent, publishing high-level papers, and helping develop the International Conference on Advanced Fiber and Polymer Materials into the world's largest fiber-themed academic event.
This award indicates that China's textile industry has moved from an early stage of technology importation to a phase of two-way empowerment and platform co-building in international science and technology cooperation. For domestic companies, this means more opportunities for international collaboration in high-end fiber materials and smart equipment, but it also requires stronger independent R&D capabilities and adaptability to international rules.