National Standard Draft for Flash-Spun Nonwovens Finalized, Marking a New Phase for Domestic Substitution

China's flash-spun nonwovens industry has reached a critical milestone: the national standard for flash-spun nonwovens, led by Xiamen Dangsheng New Materials Co., Ltd., has completed its initial draft following two technical discussions in Nantong, Jiangsu. This marks a pivotal step from commercial production toward standardized, large-scale substitution of a strategic material long dominated by a single foreign supplier.

Standard Gap and Industrial Bottleneck

Flash-spun nonwovens are indispensable in medical and pharmaceutical packaging, infectious disease emergency protection, and military protective gear due to their ultra-lightweight, high toughness, and superior barrier properties. However, China has lacked a unified national product standard, leading to inconsistent testing methods and grading systems. This has hindered downstream procurement and slowed domestic material adoption in highly regulated sectors like healthcare and defense.

Policy support has been clear: the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission, in their guidance for high-quality development of technical textiles, explicitly identified flash-spinning as a key technology to advance. The 14th Five-Year Plan for the textile industry further lists it as a critical breakthrough area.

Dangsheng's Role and Industrial Foundation

Dangsheng New Materials, the lead drafter, achieved commercial production of its first flash-spun nonwovens line in 2019, becoming the world's second and China's first company to master full-scale production of this material, breaking a nearly 60-year monopoly. This breakthrough gave Dangsheng not only production capacity but also extensive real-world data across product specifications and applications, providing a solid industrial foundation for the standard.

Two technical meetings brought together over 20 key enterprises and research institutes, including Jiangsu Qingyun, Kingfa Technology, Minshida, Guotu New Materials, Xinhua Medical, CGN Research Institute, and Donghua University. Participants reached consensus on the standard's framework, product classification, testing methods, and key technical indicators.

Standard Content and Industry Impact

The draft standard defines product classification, testing methods, and a grading system. The drafting group will now finalize a consultation draft. The standard's impact will be multi-faceted:

• Unified testing methods: Replacing fragmented enterprise-specific metrics, improving procurement transparency.
• Graded performance: Setting differentiated indicators for medical packaging, protective gear, and printing substrates, avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach.
• Market regulation: Filling a national standard void, providing a regulatory basis for domestic material substitution, especially in stringent sectors like medical device packaging.

Implications for the Supply Chain

For upstream raw material and equipment suppliers, standard uniformity will reduce customization costs and improve supply chain efficiency. For midstream producers like Dangsheng, the standard reinforces their first-mover advantage—accumulated data and application experience can be embedded in standard clauses, creating technical barriers.

For downstream buyers, particularly in medical and defense, the standard transforms procurement from sample-based trust to data-based verification, accelerating adoption of domestic materials in critical applications.

Practical Recommendations

For Procurement Departments - Monitor the release of the consultation draft and update internal procurement specifications accordingly. - Require suppliers to provide full test reports aligned with the new standard, especially for barrier and mechanical properties. - Prioritize suppliers involved in standard drafting, as their products are likely to have higher compliance.

For Export-oriented Companies - Use the national standard as a reference to improve technical documentation for overseas clients. - Compare the new standard with international ones (e.g., ISO, ASTM) to prepare for export certification. - Leverage the grading system for differentiated pricing strategies across markets like the EU and Southeast Asia.