NANJING — Sinopec Yizheng Chemical Fibre Co Ltd, a subsidiary of China's largest oil refiner Sinopec, put into operation the fifth of its 12 meltblown non-woven fabric production lines on April 20 to meet the brisk demand of face mask producers.
As the essential material to make masks, the non-woven fabric is the core raw material that serves as the filtering layer in the middle part of masks to absorb dust, bacteria and pollen.
Yizheng's daily production capacity of meltblown non-woven fabric has reached six metric tons since it launched the first production line on March 29. The company has so far produced a total of 65 tons of the raw material used in making 65 million medical masks.
Once in full operation by the end of May, the 12 production lines can achieve an annual production capacity of 6,000 tons, ensuring the supplies to produce 18 million medical masks a day.
The company said it has attached great importance to the quality of the products and has been improving their filtration efficiency, with its meltblown non-woven fabrics tallied with KN95 standard in-lab evaluation and third-party test.
Sinopec is the upstream producer of the polypropylene raw materials in the industrial mask chain. Faced with the market shortage of masks, the company invested 300 million yuan ($42 million) to build the production facilities in its subsidiary of Sinopec Beijing Yanshan Petrochemical Co Ltd in Beijing and Sinopec Yizheng Chemical Fibre in Jiangsu.
