Dye Industry: Promote Green Product Development

In recent years, dyestuff enterprises have accelerated the pace of expansion and reorganization, and the scale of leading enterprises has gradually been expanding.

2 The industry technology is upgraded gradually: 

The improvement in the overall economic efficiency of the industry has been driven not only by the scale development of the industry but also by breakthroughs in key common technologies. The industry has strengthened the development of key technologies for cleaner production and achieved breakthroughs in a number of key industry technologies, such as the development of middle-to-high-end new reactive dyestuffs as well as the treatment and recycling of dyeing wastewater. Technological transformation and upgrading have become common in the Chinese dyestuff industry. Clean production, recycling and continuous, automated production technologies have been highly valued by dyestuff manufacturers. Centered on energy saving and emission reduction, dyestuff enterprises have kept improving their production equipment and technology, continuously absorbed high-tech achievements according to their actual conditions and vigorously promoted the cleaner production and preparation technologies of dyestuffs, so as to reduce the generation of pollutants such as wastewater and COD. Enterprise managers have gradually established a comprehensive ecological, environmental and health concept, increased investment in the comprehensive environmental protection and treatment and consciously taken the initiative to recycle and reuse wastes, so as to achieve clean production and waste utilization.

3 The position of China-made dyestuffs in the international market has further improved:

Gladly, Chinese dyestuff enterprises have also made progress in opening up overseas markets.

4 The overall strength of China-made dyestuff products is enhanced. 

Although the supply scale and influence of China-made dyestuffs continue to increase, their competitiveness is mainly reflected in conventional products. But there are still significant gaps between Chinese dyestuff enterprises and large European and American dyestuff companies in aspects such as product differentiation, the R&D and production of dyestuff varieties needed by medium and high-end textile products as well as the ability of providing dyeing and finishing application technologies, services and solutions. From the long-term development point of view, Chinese printing and dyeing enterprises will face higher quality requirements from customers and will be asked to provide a faster delivery time and to be more able to meet small-batch and multi-variety printing, dyeing and processing requirements, while the pressure faced by the downstream industry to meet the requirements of energy conservation and environmental protection is also growing. Therefore, in addition to equipment upgrading and management improvement, printing and dyeing enterprises will have increasing demands for more cost-effective, differentiated mid-to-high end dyestuffs as well as supporting application processes. Chinese dyestuff enterprises will still have great room and opportunities for growth in the aspect of high-end, environmental-friendly, service-oriented and international development as well as in the aspect of seizing the market share from the hands of European and American companies.

Although the industry has achieved brilliant achievements, there is still a certain gap between its level and the international advanced level. Specifically, the gap includes: the industry’s basic research and common technology development work are weak; its ability of industrializing technologies and integrating technologies is not strong; its energy consumption and water consumption need to decrease and its process control and waste treatment technology urgently need to upgrade; and its investment in scientific and technological research and development is low.