Linyi work glove maker pushes into overseas premium markets

In a testing laboratory at Shandong Hengxing Technology Co in Banquan town, Junan county, Linyi, East China's Shandong province, researchers put functional work gloves through tearing, cutting, puncture, abrasion and corrosion tests day after day, probing how far protection and comfort can be pushed together.

Zhang Yongxin, head of product development, fed a silver-black glove into a TDM cut tester, where a blade slices through the material at set speeds. "It takes 40 to 60 disposable blades to produce one full set of cut-grade data," he said. "We have reached A9, currently the industry's highest cut-resistance grading, and passed abrasion tests at 8,000 to 20,000 revolutions against European standards." He then dunked a self-developed long chemical-proof glove in 99.9 percent strength acid; the hand mold inside came out unscathed. The glove combines oil, water and light biochemical protection against 12 chemicals.

On the factory floor, alloy wire, tungsten wire, yarn and ultra-high-molecular polyethylene pass through knitting, film coating, dipping, drying and washing lines before printing and packing. Five heat-transfer printers mark customer logos onto 13-gauge polyester latex gloves bound for Japan and the Republic of Korea, while workers pack PO anti-cut series gloves for a French client at about six seconds a pair. "Our six workshops and 27 lines ran at full capacity in the first half — machines never stopped, some customers ship 10 containers a month," said Gao Jingzhi, director of the business department.

The company traces its roots to the 1980s and has spent more than 40 years in work gloves, now operating three modern smart production bases in Junan and Pingyi with annual output value steady at 2 billion yuan ($282 million). It is certified as a provincial "specialized and sophisticated" enterprise, and its chairman Ding Hanming sits on the national standardization committee for personal protective equipment as a hand-protection expert, participating in drafting national standards.

Exports cover more than 100 countries, 500-plus clients and over 1,000 product categories. The company has obtained both OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 and MADE IN GREEN certifications, and its self-developed Nexifoam and GripFoam technologies have won customer feedback in meeting green procurement requirements of overseas premium markets. "Next we will push our own brand overseas, using Linyi's 'hundred teams, thousand enterprises' trade-city globalization campaign to raise our global market share from the current 20 percent toward 50 percent," Gao said.

Editor：韩蒙蒙