In Shihezi, a major cotton-producing area in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Esquel Group is building a factory that utilizes waterless dyeing technology, a first of its kind for the global cotton textile industry.
The Hong Kong-headquartered garment manufacturer has long operated in Xinjiang since 1995, drawn by the region’s premium long-staple cotton and strong talent pool. Despite recent external challenges, including being added to the U.
S. government’s “entity list” in 2020, Esquel has responded with continued investment, innovation, and an unwavering commitment to the region.
Rather than retreat, the company doubled down on enhancing its technological capabilities — turning challenges into opportunities to sharpen Xinjiang’s competitiveness in the global textile value chain.
The Shihezi project marks the commercialization of the technological effort to address a long-standing bottleneck in the region’s textile value chain — the large consumption of water in traditional cotton dyeing as opposed to the scarcity of water in Xinjiang.
Xinjiang is China’s foremost producer of high-quality cotton. In 2024, the region produced 5.69 million tonnes of cotton, accounting for over one-fifth of the world’s total. The region’s cotton and textile industry provided jobs for nearly 1 million people, despite market disruptions caused by Western sanctions.
Before being added to the entity list, Esquel supplied over 100 million shirts annually to world-renowned brands. In 2018, its annual sales exceeded 1.3 billion U.S. dollars, with over 60 percent coming from European and American markets.
Although the company faced significant short-term impacts due to shifting market conditions, including factory closures in Malaysia and Sri Lanka, as well as one spinning mill in Xinjiang, Esquel continues to move forward with long-term vision and purpose.
