1. Why Henan Deserves a Separate Look in Chemical Fiber Manufacturing

Chemical fiber manufacturing is an industry whose name hides the differences inside it. It covers both synthetic fibers refined from petroleum—polyester, nylon, spandex—and cellulosic fibers regenerated from natural materials such as wood pulp and bamboo pulp. These products differ in process, in raw-material source, and in customer, and lumping them under a single output figure easily masks the real structure.

When people discuss Chinese chemical fiber, the names that come up are Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Fujian—provinces close to petrochemical refineries, close to ports, close to the textile market, that scaled polyester filament to world-class volumes. Henan is not on that list, and its fiber industry grew up looking very different. Henan has no large coastal refining base, yet it stands at the national and even global front in two unusual niche categories: nylon 66 refined from coal, and cellulose filament and spandex regenerated from wood pulp. The former is concentrated in Pingdingshan, the latter in Xinxiang. Two inland cities, neither relying on oil, both drawing instead on their own resource endowment and decades of industrial heritage.

The Tianxia Gongchang Industry Research Institute singles out Henan's chemical fiber manufacturing precisely because it offers an unusual sample: when an inland province lacks the oil and ports of the coastal fiber provinces, where does its fiber industry grow from, and what shape does it take. This report endorses no investment judgment; it simply maps out Henan's raw-material-led fiber chain and honestly points to the links it has yet to complete.

2. Pingdingshan: Refining a Lump of Coal Into the World's Largest Nylon 66

Henan's heaviest stroke in chemical fiber lies in the coal mines of Pingdingshan.

Pingdingshan is an old coal city. Rather than guard its mines and sell coal the way many resource-based cities did, it followed the long chain of "coal—coke—hydrogen—ammonia—caprolactam—nylon," refining a lump of coal all the way into chemical fiber feedstock. Today the banner it hangs is China Nylon City, a title conferred by the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation. The Pingdingshan nylon new-materials cluster spans roughly 35 square kilometers and hosts more than 200 enterprises, with the broader industry already past the trillion-yuan scale—according to public reports, in 2024 the China Nylon City industries achieved about 94.6 billion yuan in main business revenue, up 5 percent year on year.

Place this within chemical fiber manufacturing and its weight becomes clear. Pingdingshan holds the world's most advanced nylon 66 polymerization technology; its nylon 66 salt and nylon 66 chip capacity ranks first in Asia, and it has built the world's largest nylon 66 industrial-yarn and tire-cord-fabric base, with capacity in both ranking first globally. Nylon 66 industrial yarn is an industrial-grade synthetic fiber—high strength, fatigue-resistant—used heavily in tire skeletons, airbags, seat belts, and conveyor belts, the kind of technical textiles that support modern manufacturing rather than the cloth people wear. By taking this link to world class, Henan occupies not the ordinary civilian-filament middle of the chain but the higher-barrier synthetic-fiber upstream.

Its distinctiveness lies right here: Pingdingshan's nylon 66 follows a coal-based route, on an entirely different process line from the oil-based polyester of the coastal provinces. The feedstock comes from local coal, runs down through chemical intermediates like caprolactam and adipic acid to chips and then to fiber, and finally supplies the tire and automotive industries across the country and the world. It is a strength grown hard out of resource endowment and a coal-chemical foundation, one other provinces find difficult to copy.

3. Shenma: A World-Class Player in Nylon 66 Industrial Yarn and Cord Fabric

China Nylon City is not a scatter of workshops; it has a main axis—the leading enterprises represented by Pingmei Shenma, and at the core of the fiber link sits the listed company Shenma Co.

Shenma is the domestic leader in nylon 66 industrial yarn, having built a relatively complete chain from adipic acid to nylon 66 chips and on to industrial yarn, cord fabric, and engineering plastics. According to its 2024 annual report, full-year operating revenue reached about 13.9 billion yuan; nylon 66 industrial-yarn output was roughly 60,000 tons, up 8 percent year on year, with sales of about 60,000 tons, up 15 percent; nylon 66 cord-fabric output was around 70,000 tons. In the global nylon 66 industrial-yarn capacity landscape, Shenma and Turkey's Kordsa rank first and second—an inland Chinese company standing at the world front in such a high-performance fiber niche is among the most notable strokes in Henan's fiber industry.

Cord fabric is the key word for understanding Shenma's line. So-called cord fabric is a tire-skeleton material woven from high-strength fibers like nylon 66 and then dipped; it is the "bone" inside a tire that bears tension. Shenma's dipped nylon 66 cord fabric supplies tire makers worldwide, and its industrial yarn also goes into airbags, conveyor belts, ropes, and netting. In other words, what Pingdingshan makes is not an ordinary textile but a critical base material embedded in the automotive and traffic-safety system, sold to tire plants and automakers—large industrial users with exacting demands on formula and quality.

The most important recent step on this line is closing the once-bottlenecked adiponitrile link. Synthesizing nylon 66 depends on hexamethylenediamine, whose upstream feedstock adiponitrile long relied on imports and was monopolized by a few foreign firms, a key constraint on domestic nylon 66 volume. The adiponitrile projects advanced by Pingmei Shenma have come on stream one after another, connecting the full chain of "adiponitrile—hexamethylenediamine—nylon 66 salt—nylon 66 chips—nylon 66 industrial yarn—cord fabric," giving this coal-based nylon line, for the first time, autonomous continuity from the most upstream feedstock to the end product. The significance lies not in how much output was added, but in freeing Henan's nylon strength from being choked by a single imported raw material.

4. Xinxiang: An Old Mill That Made Bailu the National Cellulose-Filament Leader

Shift from Pingdingshan to Xinxiang and Henan's other face in chemical fiber appears. It follows a route entirely different from coal-based nylon—regenerated cellulosic fiber and spandex.

The protagonist on this line is the listed company Xinxiang Chemical Fibre and its Bailu brand. This old fiber mill, with more than sixty years of production experience, did not rest on legacy products but took two things to the front of the industry. First, biomass cellulose filament: according to its 2024 annual report, capacity is about 100,000 tons and output that year was about 96,000 tons, with capacity ranking first in the industry; the Bailu brand offers a full range of specifications, from ultra-fine 30-denier yarn to coarse 600-denier yarn, covering more than twenty types, plus colored and functional fibers. Second, spandex: capacity is about 200,000 tons and output that year about 180,000 tons, with capacity ranking among the top at home. In 2024, driven by higher cellulose-filament sales and lower unit costs, the company's gross margin recovered; full-year revenue reached about 7.4 billion yuan and net profit attributable to shareholders about 250 million yuan, up sharply from the prior year.

Cellulose filament and spandex define Xinxiang's position in the fiber chain. Biomass cellulose filament is regenerated from natural materials such as wood pulp; it feels close to real silk and serves as feedstock for mid-to-high-end apparel and home textiles, belonging to the regenerated-cellulosic family. Spandex is the elastic yarn of everyday speech—the stretch in sportswear, underwear, and socks comes almost entirely from it—belonging to the elastomer branch of synthetic fibers. Neither is the oil-based commodity polyester; both are niche fiber categories with relatively higher process barriers and higher unit prices. In recent years Xinxiang Chemical Fibre has also pushed cellulose filament toward green directions, introducing new bio-based materials such as Juncao in search of a second growth curve for this old fiber line.

Put Pingdingshan and Xinxiang together and the outline of Henan's upstream fiber sector becomes clear: one makes synthetic nylon 66 from coal, taking industrial yarn and cord fabric to world first; the other makes regenerated cellulose filament from wood pulp and Juncao, and spandex from chemistry, taking two niche categories to the national front. Two routes lift Henan to a high-end position in fiber feedstock—and this is exactly where Henan differs most from the coastal polyester giants: those provinces win on the volume of commodity polyester filament, while Henan wins on the technology and capacity of two unusual niche categories.

5. Strong Upstream, Weak End: The Links Henan Has Yet to Complete

Pulling the two lines together, Henan's chemical fiber manufacturing takes on a distinctly inland shape: a very strong upstream—Pingdingshan's coal-refined nylon 66 industrial yarn and cord fabric, the world's largest, and Xinxiang's wood-pulp-and-Juncao cellulose filament, the industry's first, with spandex among the national top. Both niche categories stand at the national and even global front, with no small technical content or unit price. But move the gaze downstream and Henan's structure shows a less complete side.

The first link not held firm is the transmission from raw material to high-value local end products. Pingdingshan's nylon 66 industrial yarn mainly supplies the tire and automotive industries nationwide and worldwide, and Xinxiang's cellulose filament and spandex are also sold largely as feedstock to weaving and apparel firms in other provinces—Henan took fiber feedstock to the top yet failed to turn it locally into higher-value end products nearby. The strength hangs somewhat in isolation at the very upstream of the chain, loosely coupled with Henan's own downstream.

The second is concentration in category and customer. Nylon 66 industrial yarn depends heavily on the tire and automotive industries, its fate tied to vehicle production and sales; cellulose filament and spandex move with the apparel and home-textile cycle. Once downstream demand softens, a structure built on a single category and a single major customer group bears pressure more directly than provinces with diversified categories—worth watching especially in a cyclical industry like chemical fiber.

The third is that the climb from industrial-grade toward high-end civilian use is still under way. Pingmei Shenma has set up a joint venture with an outside partner on a high-end nylon 66 civilian-yarn project, seeking to extend its largely industrial-yarn capability into higher-value civilian fiber; Xinxiang Chemical Fibre is also using green materials such as Juncao to find new growth for cellulose filament. These are the right directions, but whether they can grow from demonstration into a broad industry remains to be seen.

For upstream suppliers serving these links—whether selling caprolactam, adiponitrile, nylon chips, wood pulp, and spandex feedstock, or selling polymerization, spinning, and dipping equipment—reaching Henan's chemical fiber factory customers at scale is possible through Tianxia Gongchang, filtering Henan's chemical fiber manufacturing factory directory and decision-maker contacts along the two dimensions of region and industry, turning upstream sales development from door-to-door inquiry into following a map.

6. The Institute's View: Carry the Strongest Upstream One Step Further Down

What is most worth remembering about Henan's chemical fiber manufacturing is not where its total ranks nationally, but the hard capability it built in two unusual niche categories: an inland city with no oil, started on coal, took nylon 66 industrial yarn and cord fabric to world first and cracked the long-choked adiponitrile link; an old fiber mill with more than sixty years of history took its Bailu biomass cellulose filament to the industry's first in capacity and its spandex to the national front. These are abilities grown hard out of resource endowment and an industrial foundation, hard for others to copy.

But the quality of a fiber chain ultimately rests not on which raw-material link is strongest, but on whether it can carry that strongest end down through chips, spinning, weaving, and finished products, keeping more value within the province. The suspense for Henan's fiber industry falls precisely on this stretch: whether nylon 66 can move from industrial yarn into higher-end civilian and engineering uses, and whether cellulose filament and spandex can extend downward into more local end products, so the two niche strengths at the top no longer hang in isolation. This is harder than adding another polymerization line, yet it more truly decides whether Henan's chemical fiber can move from a world-class player at the feedstock end to a position more complete in structure and more resilient through the cycle. For an industry hidden behind a generic name, the real story often lies in whether its strongest end can be carried all the way down.

Data Sources

  • Tianxia Gongchang (Henan chemical fiber manufacturing factory directory and industry data)
  • Pingdingshan Development and Reform Commission: profile of the Pingdingshan nylon new-materials cluster, nylon 66 salt and chip capacity first in Asia, nylon 66 industrial yarn and cord fabric capacity first in the world
  • CRI Online Henan and Henan Economic Daily: from a Central Plains coal city to China Nylon City, Pingdingshan nylon industry development, 2024 China Nylon City main business revenue and enterprise count
  • People's Daily: China Nylon City Pingdingshan advancing high-quality development of nylon new materials, Pingmei Shenma's coal-based transformation path
  • Dahe Net: Pingdingshan nylon 66 industrial yarn and cord fabric capacity first in the world
  • Shenma Industrial Co., Ltd.: 2024 annual report, nylon 66 industrial yarn and cord fabric output and sales, ranking among the global top two with Turkey's Kordsa in industrial-yarn capacity, applications in tire cord fabric and airbags
  • Securities Times and The Paper: adiponitrile localization breakthrough and full-chain continuity of nylon 66
  • Guangzhou Office of the People's Government of Henan Province: joint venture between Pingmei Shenma Group and Yili Group on a high-end nylon 66 civilian-yarn project
  • Xinxiang Chemical Fibre Co., Ltd.: 2024 annual report, Bailu biomass cellulose filament capacity and output, industry-first position, spandex capacity and output, revenue and net profit
  • Securities Times: Xinxiang Chemical Fibre's improved cellulose-filament gross margin and 2024 return to profit
  • China Chemical Fibers Association: 2024 analysis of the Chinese chemical fiber industry, spandex share of total fiber output