By DAI XIAOHUA

The privately owned Nanping Yongfeng Textile Co. Ltd. (Yongfeng) has many accolades for the Fujian Technology and Project Fair. Having attended the June 18 fair for the past three years, they have learned greatly from their experiences there. Shen Mubin, assistant to General Manager of Yongfeng, told Beijing Review that the “fair serves as the best platform for enterprises that the government has yet facilitated.” It can connect enterprises with the new technologies they need so that they can produce products of high quality and with hi-tech content. This is good for consumers and enterprises, bringing both fortune and development.

When Yongfeng was first founded in 2004 it only had a few dozen investors and a total investment of only several million yuan. At that time, the company didn’t possess any new equipment or technology. The local government had been wondering how to build up the reputation and brand awareness of the company. Their decision was to arm the company with hi-tech, new technology so that the company could have a brand new start.

In 2005, before the company attended the fair, the city development and reform commission visited Yongfeng many times to understand the situation the enterprise was in and its requirement for new technologies and products. After this they visited colleges and research institutions in Shanghai and Nanjing and reached initial agreements for cooperation between enterprises and the educational institutions over technology matters.

After a series of negotiations, Yongfeng entered into a technology assignment agreement with Shanghai-based Donghua University, the top university in the domestic textile industry. The former adopted Richcel Fibre technology from the latter to produce Richcel Fibre Pile Cloth. This industrial cloth is flexible and pliable and has good piling performance with better quality than traditional adhesive pile cloth. Upon its introduction to the market, it was well received as a car interior material, as a construction material, and for high-quality boxes and bags, for metallurgical and mechanical industries and has been sold to many provinces and cities across the country. In the next year, the factory manufactured 2 million meters of the cloth, achieving a turnover of 30 million yuan. Currently, an increasing number of businesspeople are visiting Yongfeng and making purchasing orders. Richcel Fibre has demonstrated itself to be a great potential product and has become Yongfeng’s leading product in the market.

In 2006, Yongfeng participated in the Fujian Technology and Project Fair again, and was introduced to the more advanced and patented “Jute Fibre” from Shanghai Donghua University, which further improved the factory’s technology. One or two months before the fair, the partners began a new round of negotiations. Their several successful cooperative efforts have developed into a close relationship between Yongfeng and Donghua University. Both sides agreed to establish the Donghua Yongfeng Leather Pile Cloth Research & Development Center funded by the enterprise in order to turn laboratory achievements into practical uses and develop new products and new technologies. At the same time, Yongfeng has become a trial base for Donghua students and a base for promotion of the school’s technological achievements. The university’s educational and scientific research has obtained a reliable platform for students to learn from the combination of university education, research and enterprise production.

Three years after its establishment, Yongfeng has become a key enterprise in the Nanping municipality and in the Fujian provincial textile industry, thanks to close attention to and active involvement in the fair. Currently, this enterprise has an annual turnover of more than 8,000 tons of cotton yarn and 360 million meters of industrial pile cloth, with more than 400 million yuan of additional production and 60 million yuan in tax revenues. Lin Daohui, Head of Yongfeng, stated, “Yongfeng will expand its products to the international market in the coming three to five years and Richcel Fiber will become an influential brand at home and abroad.”