HANGZHOU, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- The world's largest hosiery production base in east China's Zhuji City, dubbed as "the sock capital," has been on a fast track of development driven by independent technical innovation, with domestic hosiery machines rumbling at high efficiency.
Boasting a complete sock industrial chain from machinery, raw material to designing and logistics, the Datang subdistrict of Zhuji in Zhejiang Province churns out approximately 25 billion pairs of socks yearly, accounting for more than 70 percent of the output of China and one-third of the whole world.
In Datang, the hosiery machine holds the key to this traditional industry with small margins.
Producing a pair of socks involves procedures including sewing, weaving, and side-flipping. In the past, these labor-consuming processes needed to be conducted in different workshops. With an innovative hosiery machine that integrates these three procedures, it only takes less than three minutes to produce a single sock.
Sock factories in Datang used to depend on advanced devices imported from countries such as the Republic of Korea and Italy at about 300,000 yuan (more than 41,000 U.S. dollars) a set, a price unbearable for small and medium-sized companies.
To reduce the production cost and break the technology bottleneck on the premise of intellectual property rights protection, some hosiery machine manufacturers started with independent research and development from scratch in 2011.
About four years later, domestic integrated machines were put on the market at a much lower price. Now it costs approximately 80,000 yuan a set. Intelligent assembly lines have replaced manual workshops, and production efficiency has been greatly raised.
Currently, about 10,000 sets of integrated hosiery machines are produced in Zhuji each year, accounting for 90 percent of domestic market and also being exported to some Asian and South American countries. More than 100 digital workshops in Datang are now equipped with the homegrown machinery.
With independent patents, local machine manufacturers have continued with technical innovation and upgrading, some even outperforming their foreign counterparts.
For instance, engineers from Hairun Jinggong, a leading hosiery machine manufacturer in Datang, have succeeded in optimizing a component used in the procedure of weaving.
"The updated part, with 500 accessories more than Italian machines but in a smaller size, helps to double the efficiency [in this procedure]," said Gu Bosheng, manager of the manufacturer.
Mechanicians like Gu didn't rest on their laurels. Yang Zhilin, manager of another intelligent machine manufacturer in Datang, said most of the profits have been invested into research and development.
"Newly-developed machines will soon be outdated ... we cannot relax in case we are surpassed by our counterparts," said Yang.
Sci-tech innovation has underpinned traditional Chinese manufacturers in industrial transformation and upgrading. With a higher production efficiency, Datang sock manufacturers have put more focus on designing and marketing, increasing the added-value of the small wares. They also embraced e-commerce and live-streaming to promote sock sales.
The gross industrial production above the designated size in Datang reached 5.89 billion yuan in the first half of 2023, according to local authority.
At dusk, trucks outside the Datang sock market were seen loading socks to be transported to their next destinations. The day at Datang was coming to an end, but the socks' journey just began. Enditem
(Li Miaoran, Zhao Yingxin and Li Wenrui also contributed to the story.)
