This article is from WeChat public account: China Entrepreneur Magazine (ID: iceo-com-cn) , author: Li Jia
“I have a meltblown cloth, who has a mask machine?”
Sinopec vibrated and let everyone focus on the mask machine. More than 3,000 companies nationwide switched to producing masks. As of February 29, China’s daily production capacity of masks exceeded 100 million.
Now the market situation has changed. It’s not that the mask machine is insufficient, but that the meltblown cloth capacity is stuck.
Dawn is the largest domestic manufacturer of polypropylene meltblown materials for mask cloths, with a market share of about 40%. Polypropylene meltblown material is the core and most important raw material of masks. At present, the production volume of meltblown material of only Daoen Co., Ltd. can meet the production capacity of more than 200 million masks. We still ca n’t buy masks?
Dao En’s Chairman Yu Xiaoning recently accepted an exclusive interview with “Chinese Entrepreneurs” to elaborate on the reasons. The following is dictated by Yu Xiaoning, with abridgements.
Yu Xiaoning, Chairman of Shandong Daon Polymer Materials Co., Ltd.
The most important thing for a medical mask is the middle meltblown layer, which is the “heart” of the mask , mainly to isolate droplets, particles and so on. The mask melt polypropylene material produced by our company is the core and most critical material of masks.
In the mask industry chain, we are in the middle and upper reaches. Generally, polypropylene special resins are first obtained from petroleum and other industries. We produce polypropylene melt-blown materials for mask cloths, and then send them to melt-blown nonwoven fabric factories to make melt-blown cloths, and then send them to mask factories.
One ton of polypropylene meltblown special material can be made into 300,000 to 500,000 N95 masks, or 1 million disposable medical surgical masks. Protective clothing also requires this product. In the past, the amount of meltblown material was not very large, and everyone did not pay attention to this matter. The annual production capacity of the industry is 70,000 tons. Even fewer companies like us can produce special materials for polypropylene meltblown. In the past, there were probably five or six companies.
Dawn Co., Ltd. has independently developed a special material for polypropylene meltblown masks since 2003. Because of SARS that year, we changed it from a series of varieties to a key product to study. After 17 years of accumulation, We are already the leading domestic manufacturer in terms of technology and output, with a market share of 40%.
Many companies have switched to masks since the outbreak, but why is the output slow? Because they don’t have technical reserves, it takes time to research the raw materials and process formula. Although the technical threshold of meltblown materials is not too high, the requirements for process control are very high. Polypropylene meltblown special materials belong to high melt index products. Generally, the spunbond melt index is around 40, and the meltblown material is as high as 1500. If the process is not mastered in the production process, meltblown fluctuations will occur, resulting in meltblown cloth The fiber filaments are not uniform, which will affect the barrier effect of the filter layer of the mask.
So if you buy equipment to formulate and get workers, can this meltblown material be made directly? This is not the case. These are not enough. The meltblown special materials used in masks are very demanding. Under normal circumstances, the polypropylene meltblown special materials used in masks need to undergo strict performance tests, including biological index tests “text-remarks” label = “Remarks”> (such as antibacterial, cytotoxicity, etc.) , these tests take a long time, but also rely on strict process management, skilled workers and so on. So I am also a little worried now. If everyone blindly tries to supply, it will affect the product quality. According to the news, some companies that did not produce this kind of product in the past produced tens of tons or hundreds of tons at a time. I think this is also a problem. This is epidemic prevention material, which is related to human life and health.
As the core material of masks, polypropylene melt-blown materials have higher requirements for process control.
In fact, when the company was closed on January 23, a year ago, we originally stocked some raw materials and products. According to the previous demand, one day’s order was about 100 tons, but we found that orders suddenly started to increase in those days. After experiencing atypical pneumonia, the company has also been doing protection and other products for many years. I still have a little coping experience, so I only let some employees go home for the New Year, instead of giving the maintenance workers a vacation, but let them quickly repair the equipment. After overhauling for two days, it was found that the epidemic situation started to get serious, and our order had exceeded the output. I immediately arranged to start construction on the second day of the new year. At the beginning, the output and the amount of storage were basically matched.
But on the fifth and sixth day, I found that the order has seriously exceeded our capacity. At this time, I began to consider the issue of increasing production. If it is too late to re-customize the equipment, we have to disassemble and disassemble the equipment on other products. We originally had 8 production lines, which later became 21. There are four production workshops in total, and the remaining three workers are transferred over to increase To two hundred people, all produce meltblown materials.
The daily output has increased from 135 tons to 230 tons, an increase of 70%. Despite full production, there is still a lot of pressure. According to the current output, these meltblown materials can produce 230 million disposable medical masks. Even N95 can produce 70 to 115 million. However, the daily production capacity of masks in China has just exceeded 100 million. The key is stuck in the meltblown cloth link. When we started construction on the second day of the new year, many meltblown cloth factories have not resumed work because of the Spring Festival and epidemic conditions, and some did not start until the eighth day or even later, which will also affect the production of masks.
Right now, the difficulty we face in increasing production is equipment installation. At that time, it was other production line equipment that was transformed by itself, which needed to be moved, rebuilt, commissioned and installed, with low production capacity, low output, and relatively large energy consumption.