Anta picks Donghua as latest research partner
After joining hands last summer with Beijing’s Tsinghua University to jointly establish a sports fashion research centre, China’s largest sports group, Jinjiang-headquartered Anta, has signalled that its plans to continue forward in this vein by recently unveiling a joint “innovation centre” in partnership with Donghua University in Shanghai.
As sportstextiles reported in September, Donghua was formally approved as a “modern textile frontier scientific research base” by Shanghai’s education committee last year. Local media reports from that time said that the university would focus on undertaking original research into textile processing, chemistry and machinery (particularly intelligent manufacturing) as it moves forward.
This latest high-level collaboration, to be officially known as the Donghua University-Anta Group Joint Innovation Center, will be long-term and “win-win” in nature, according to reports from within the country. Both activewear and sports shoes will fall under its remit, as will a considerable focus on exploring new materials and design breakthroughs.
Ultra-thin and ultra-light thermal textile technologies and cooling fabrics have already been singled out as key areas for research and development.
Chinese Academy of Engineering academician and Donghua University president, Yu Jianyong, commented that both parties would strive to cultivate a world-class research centre. He added that achieving technical innovations in the field of sports equipment would not only “serve” the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, as well as other major national events, but also boost the development of the Chinese sports industry at large.
Anta Group’s president, executive director and chief executive of its outdoor sports division, Zheng Jie, added that his company was proud to join with Donghua in not only exploring forward-looking industry research and “transformation”, but also in rebranding local sporting goods from “made in China” to “created in China” in order to improve their competitiveness in the global commercial arena.
Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology inaugurated its own Sports Fashion Innovation Academy this past October, a move that was followed by the unveiling of Peak Sport's new sports science laboratory in Xiamen a couple of months later.
Image credit: Zhou Guanhuai
