Jifa Group: 65 Years Old Textile Industry

From processing hair, starting knitting underwear, to developing a full-function industrial chain of needle woven clothing, and even now involved in medical materials, intelligent manufacturing, global leading technological innovation After 65 years of operation and trek, Jifa Group Co., Ltd., located in Jimo District, Qingdao City, has become the most complete variety of hair accessories and China's large textile and garment manufacturing base. This year, although affected by the epidemic situation, the operating revenue of May to June has increased against the trend.

How can this old enterprise, which has been struggling in the traditional industry, remain prosperous forever?

"Fighting all the way"

If the difficulties are compared to "strange", that is to say, the development of Yifa is based on "fighting against monsters all the way".

Jifa was founded in the mid-1950s as a rural hair stall cooperative and developed into a small collective factory for hair processing in the 1970s. In 1974, as the international chemical fiber wigs began to develop by leaps and bounds, China's domestic human hair industry suffered a serious impact, that is, hair decisively compressed the export of file hair production, put on the production line of new varieties, and speed up the industry expansion. A series of new products, such as labor protection gloves, teaching wigs, toy wigs, men's and women's wigs, have entered the international market at one stroke, and the economic benefits of enterprises have risen sharply.

At the beginning of 1981, due to the restriction of export quota, labor protection gloves, the leading product that brought enterprises back from the life and death line, stopped production for a time, and once again faced with life and death. The textile and ink industry has become one of the largest enterprises in the textile industry.

In 1993, Jifa successively established joint ventures with several Japanese companies including the world's top 500 enterprises, and established a knitting industrial park in 2000, which led to thousands of knitting industrial clusters in Jimo City. In December 2002, Jimo City was selected as "China famous knitting city" by China Textile Industry Association.

In 2005, tariff trade barriers and human resource problems have become another "strange" that perplexes Jifa's further development. Jifa has implemented the strategy of "going out" and "going in". "Going out" means building factories overseas. They have established manufacturing bases in Vietnam, Cambodia and other countries in the whole industrial chain of R & D, fabric and ready-made clothing. "Going in" means extending the main body of production and market to the inland areas of Anhui, Shandong, central and western regions, so as to further optimize the industrial layout and domestic market. At present, the export of instant products has been adjusted from 90% in the past to 60% in export, and the domestic and foreign markets have gradually become balanced.

In recent years, as textile orders begin to change from small variety and large batch to multi variety and small batch, the traditional manufacturing mode has been difficult to complete this kind of order, and then began to transform to intelligent manufacturing. In 2016, Jifa carried out intelligent transformation on Qingdao Guihua Knitting Co., Ltd., which is subordinate to Jifa, through all links of the whole industrial chain with informatization, and established a supply chain mode of agile manufacturing and flexible production, so as to quickly meet the market demand of multi variety, small batch and quick response orders. "In the past year, there were less than 40 orders, and an order of several hundred thousand pieces. Now there are nearly 6000 orders every year. There are thousands of more orders per order, but only a few hundred pieces are less, some even one piece. Moreover, customers require that the goods be delivered in one or two weeks." If sun Weihua, the general manager of Qingdao Knitting Co., Ltd., could not improve the manufacturing efficiency by 30% in the past

In the success of fighting against "strange", Jifa has developed into a large enterprise with more than 30 companies and branches and more than 20000 employees. It produces knitted and woven fabrics, clothing, hair accessories, bedding and other series of products, and exports them to more than 30 countries and regions such as Japan, the United States and Europe. In 2019, the company realized the operating revenue of 11.229 billion yuan, showing the "new vitality" of an old business.

Technology leading

Instant success can not be separated from its strong comprehensive innovation and R & D advantages. Jifa has established the first "national enterprise technology center" in China's knitting industry earlier, which is the "national innovative enterprise" and "high-tech enterprise" recognized by the Ministry of science and technology. At the same time, it has also built a "textile material testing center" certified by China National Accreditation Service for conformity assessment (CNAs), which can carry out monitoring according to the standards of the United States, Japan and the European Union.

At the same time, Jifa has continuously promoted the "school enterprise financial and Intellectual Cooperation", successively cooperated with more than a dozen domestic universities and scientific research institutes, including Ocean University of China, Qingdao University, Beijing Institute of fashion, Donghua University, Qingdao Agricultural University, Institute of Oceanography of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shandong Academy of Textile Sciences, and Korea University of Korea University, Toray Co., Ltd., Asahi Chemical Industry Co., Ltd. and other foreign universities have established long-term and stable cooperative relations with strong industries; remarkable achievements have been made in collaborative innovation in new textile materials, polymer materials, modern agriculture, medical equipment and other fields.

Jifa's self-developed "marine biological chitin fiber" is the first antibacterial and deodorizing functional fiber extracted from nature in the world. In the past, the application of antibacterial and deodorant materials for underwear products were all extracted from chemicals. Can we extract them from natural products that are more beneficial to people? In 2002, it started the research and development of antibacterial and deodorant materials extracted from shrimp and crab chitin. After arduous technical research, the "marine biological chitin fiber" developed by Jifa in 2003 was finally successful and won the second prize of national science and technology progress award. "At that time, this new material caused great repercussions in the Japanese textile industry. The underwear with antibacterial and odor resistance produced by this fiber was widely welcomed by the Japanese market." Yang Weidong, general manager of Jifa group, said.

Since then, Jifa group has made continuous efforts in the research and development of chitin fiber: in 2010, Jifa group completed the national science and technology support plan project of the Ministry of science and technology - the processing technology of chitin fiber; in 2012, it undertook the joint development of medical chitin fiber material, an international cooperation project of the Ministry of science and technology; in December 2012, it developed "high absorption chitosan fiber and medical fiber" ”Among them, the quality of the products has reached the international advanced level Jifa group has obtained 6 national invention patents and 2 foreign PCT patents in chitin fiber field. "At present, our research and development of chitin fiber wound healing, hemostasis and other medical materials have been widely used in Japan, the United Kingdom and other countries." Yang Weidong said.

Even in the research and development of intelligent clothing, also walk in the forefront of the industry. "We judge that the future of intelligence will be the standard configuration of clothing," Yang Weidong told reporters. Through cooperation with Japan Toray, Japan NTT and the software research institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jifa has realized the integration of fiber and sensor, algorithm and wireless communication, and has developed a variety of intelligent clothing. "We have developed clothing that can be used to monitor athletes' Sports Status and firefighters' physical condition. We have also developed clothing for elderly people's health monitoring at home, which will be put on the market at an appropriate time in the future."

Subverting tradition

On July 31, 2019, China Textile Industry Federation organized experts to identify the supercritical CO2 water free dyeing project developed by Jifa group. The experts agreed that the overall technical level of the project reached the international leading level. The FTF also defines this technology as one of the top ten disruptive technologies in the textile industry since the founding of the people's Republic of China.

"The research and development of anhydrous dyeing technology began in 2014, when the drought in Qingdao area was severe and the water consumption of textile enterprises was very large. We anticipated that water would be the bottleneck restricting the further development of Jifa, so we started the research and development of anhydrous dyeing technology." Said Wan Gang, deputy general manager of Jifa group.

In the 1980s, Germany and other European countries carried out decades of research and Exploration on carbon dioxide as the medium of water-free printing and dyeing technology, but only limited to laboratory verification. Since the 1990s, there has been no substantial breakthrough in the industrialization of Donghua University at home and abroad.

In 2014, Jifa group organized technical pre research on anhydrous dyeing technology through the cooperation of industry, University and Research Institute, carried out research on relevant equipment, process, dye matching, and scientific research risk therein, started the research and application of the technology, and built the continuous normal operation of water-free dyeing pilot equipment. "We have independently developed dozens of core components, which are completely different from traditional textile machinery. Many of them can not be made at home and abroad. We mainly cooperate with high-end equipment enterprises, which is a completely new field." Wan Gang said.

After 6 years of research and development, Jifa has realized the continuous normal operation of the equipment in the small test and the pilot test successively. All the indicators of the project products have reached the relevant national standards, and the energy saving and emission reduction effect is remarkable. It has a good market prospect and social benefits, and has the conditions for the industrialization to move forward. Before the Spring Festival in 2021, one million pieces of industrial equipment will also be put into operation. "The whole research and development process costs more than 100 million yuan, and more than 3000 experiments have been carried out. At present, 41 patent applications have been submitted, 23 have been approved, and patents have been granted in Japan and the European Union, and patent applications from the United States are being accepted." Wan Gang told reporters. The success of the industrialization of instant supercritical CO2 water free dyeing technology is of great significance to China's textile industry. It is reported that the annual discharge of wastewater from China's textile industry is 2.5 billion tons, including about 2 billion tons of printing and dyeing wastewater. The wastewater generated must be discharged after treatment. This "pollution first, then treatment" mode of "end treatment" is costly and difficult, and enterprises lack the initiative and enthusiasm to deal with pollution, which has seriously restricted the sustainable development of the industry.

"The Ministry of industry and information technology has listed this technology in the directory of green printing and dyeing guidance in 2019. The industrialization of this technology will have a good development prospect in the future, and will bring the rise of anhydrous dyeing equipment industry." Wan Gang told reporters that based on the support for environment-friendly products in the international market, products produced with this technology are particularly favored. "French and Japanese customers have said that they want as many textile products as they want without water dyeing, and are willing to give higher purchase prices."