A green and intelligent manufacturing technology covering the entire polyester fiber industry chain has just won the highest honor in China's science and technology community. The 2025 National Science and Technology Progress Award, first prize, was awarded to the project 'Key Technologies for Green and Intelligent Manufacturing of the Polyester Fiber Industry Chain,' jointly led by Tongkun Group and ten units including Donghua University. This is not only the first time this sub-sector has reached the top prize, but also means that the chemical fiber industry, which accounts for 70% of global production, has completed a systematic closure of its independent technology system.
Background
The gold content of the first prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award has a clear historical coordinate in the textile field. Previously, only three achievements in the industry had won this honor: Shandong Kangpingna's digital automatic dyeing technology for cheese in 2014, Zhongfu Shenying's thousand-ton carbon fiber industrialization technology in 2017, and the current polyester fiber industry chain technology. The first two solved the 'bottleneck' problems of intelligent dyeing and high-performance carbon fiber, while the special feature of this award-winning project is that it targets polyester fiber, the largest volume and most widely covered general material. China's chemical fiber production accounts for 70% of the world, and polyester fiber ranks first among all types of chemical fibers. Its technological upgrade directly affects the competitiveness of the entire chain, including downstream fabrics, garments, and home textiles.
The project's technological breakthroughs are concentrated in three dimensions: in green manufacturing, it pioneered a PTA-PET direct-coupled low-carbon model, replacing traditional heavy metal catalysts with environmentally friendly titanium-based catalysts, and established a full-lifecycle green standard; in intelligent manufacturing, it completed the domestic substitution of DCS control systems, achieving integrated control of process and quality; in service-oriented manufacturing, through a 'multiple heads and tails' polymerization technology platform, it achieved flexible customization and regional collaborative production of differentiated products. The core value of this system is that it is not a single-point technological improvement, but a full-chain reconstruction from raw materials to end products, from production to service.
Industry Impact
For the textile industry, what does the implementation of this technology mean? The most direct impact is cost and efficiency improvement. Public data shows that the project's results have been promoted in industrial bases such as Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Xinjiang, and in more than 10 units in the industry, accumulating new sales revenue of over 200 billion yuan, profits and taxes of over 10 billion yuan, and foreign exchange earnings of 1.8 billion US dollars. More critically, it has shifted polyester fiber production from a traditional 'high energy consumption, high emission' model to a low-carbon, intelligent track—a tangible competitive barrier for export-oriented companies facing external pressures such as the EU carbon tariff.
From the perspective of industrial chain security, as the 'industrial staple' of the textile industry, the establishment of an independent technology system for polyester fiber can effectively alleviate the 'grain-cotton conflict' and prevent the risk of industrial chain relocation. In the past few years, the trend of shifting some chemical fiber production capacity to Southeast Asia has been obvious. By achieving cost reduction, efficiency improvement, and green upgrades through technological innovation, domestic companies are actually consolidating the foundation of the local industry. Tongkun Group, leveraging the demonstration effect of this project, has been selected as one of the first batch of national 'Zero-Waste Enterprise' typical cases and awarded the 'National Excellent Intelligent Manufacturing Demonstration Factory,' providing a replicable transformation model for the industry.