60,000 tonnes a year: what the expanded plant changes, and what it does not
The Fengxian site now runs 18,000 m² with a polymerisation line, a compounding line and a pilot line, backed by in-house testing and laboratory equipment. Capacity is the headline number; the pilot line is the part a buyer should care about.
What is now on site
The Shanghai site covers 18,000 m² and is designed for 60,000 tonnes a year. Three process lines sit inside it: a polymerisation line that makes the base polymer, a compounding line that turns polymer into application grades, and a pilot line for small-volume work. Both testing and laboratory equipment are in-house rather than outsourced.
The distinction matters because most TPU suppliers buy polymer and compound it. Running polymerisation and compounding under one roof means the soft-segment chemistry and the additive package are controlled by the same quality system, and a grade's batch record starts at the reactor rather than at the bag of pellets.
Why the pilot line is the interesting line
A compounding-only supplier quotes a trial quantity from a production run, which means the customer's first experiment is already at tonne scale — expensive, and slow to schedule because it competes with commercial orders.
A pilot line separates those two things. A modified formulation, a different BaSO4 loading, a new colour or a hardness sitting between two catalogue grades can be run at kilogram scale, tested, and only then moved to the compounding line. For a device maker qualifying a new catheter jacket, or a film producer testing a different slip package, that is the difference between a four-week trial and a four-month one.
What it does not change
A new building does not re-baseline published data. Grade codes, TDS values and test methods stay as published; a page that said 85 Shore A before the expansion still says 85 Shore A. Any change to a grade's formulation goes through change control and is notified to the customers who buy it — capacity is a supply fact, not a specification fact.
Capacity is also not availability. 60,000 tonnes a year is a design figure across the whole range; what can be shipped in a given month depends on which grade, which packaging and what is already scheduled. That question is answered per order, not per website.