'Little giant' presses ahead with innovative skills and improved materials

Jinzhida, a Shanghai “Technology Little Giant” firm based in Jiading District's Waigang Town, has been providing automotive interior solutions, including on headliners, door panels, seats and headrests, for more than 200 domestic and foreign clients.

“On average, one passenger car produced in China has in it at least one meter of composite automotive interior materials produced by Jinzhida,” said Zhang Wen, chief executive officer of Jinzhida (Zhida) Composite Materials Co.

“The industry as a whole offers no high profit now,” said Zhang. “To survive, we made innovation on tech skills and improved materials.”

The company set up its factory in Waigang Town in Jiading District in 2016. The next year it moved its headquarters from neighboring Baoshan District to Waigang.

Now as a company in the upper stream automobile industrial chain, the company has been offering composite materials for car seats, headliners and door panels for not only established brands such as Benz, BMW, Volkswagen and General Motors, but also new-energy brands such as NIO, Li Auto and Xiaomi.

It has set up research libraries including a constant humidity and temperature maintenance room, odor test room and walk-in environment room, as support for product quality control and iteration.

“We have five composite flame lines, advanced adhesive film and powder lines, and a hot glue composite line, as well as drying room and furnace for improving odors, and a 2,000-L VOC detection cubic cabin,” said Wang Chundong, director of Jinzhida's automobile operation center.

“Systemic and digital management had reduced labor costs by about 2 million yuan (US$276,290) last year,” Zhang added.