Breaking Through 'Chokepoint' Technology: China Risun's Hexamethylenediamine Plant Commenced Production

HONG KONG, May 4, 2026 - (ACN Newswire) - At 6:18 a.m. on May 4, 2026, with the successful completion of the final production process, China Risun Group’s 50,000-ton/year caprolactam-to-hexamethylenediamine (HMDA) plant at the Yuncheng Production Base was fully integrated, achieving a one-time successful start-up and producing qualified products. By directly producing HMDA from caprolactam, China Risun has broken the long-standing foreign monopoly on adiponitrile technology (adiponitrile is the key raw material for HMDA, the intermediate for nylon 66, and is regarded as the “throat” of the nylon industry chain). This breakthrough in “chokepoint” technology lays the foundation for China Risun’s strategic deployment in high-end new materials, gradually building a million-ton-scale “nylon 6 + nylon 66 + specialty nylon” industrial cluster, and establishing a national-level nylon new materials base.

Industry Background and Current Development

HMDA is a critical raw material supporting the upgrading of the nylon new materials industry. Innovation and breakthroughs in its production technology are of great significance to the development of China’s chemical industry. Currently, the industry relies on the butadiene-based process to produce adiponitrile and then HMDA. Although mature, this route has notable shortcomings: on one hand, production costs remain high due to fluctuations in butadiene feedstock prices; on the other hand, the process is complex, with extremely high technical barriers, and key patents have long been monopolized by overseas enterprises.

Against this backdrop, China Risun Group pioneered an independent R&D path, developing a new technology and process to directly produce HMDA from caprolactam. This innovation breaks industry monopolies, overcomes critical technical barriers, and opens up a new route for HMDA production.

China Risun’s R&D Journey and Innovation Achievements

As the world’s largest independent coke producer and supplier, and a global leader in differentiated coal chemical operations, China Risun Group has closely aligned with national strategic needs and accurately grasped industrial transformation trends. As early as 2011, the company foresaw the potential of the caprolactam industry, expanding its scale while establishing R&D teams to carry out independent research on new processes and technologies for caprolactam and downstream industries.

Over more than a decade, China Risun’s R&D team conducted over a thousand laboratory-scale experiments, steadily advancing to pilot-scale construction and stable operation, and ultimately achieving full industrial implementation. Throughout the journey from lab-scale to pilot-scale, process development, and industrialization, the team tackled over a hundred research topics, secured dozens of core patents with fully independent intellectual property rights, and successfully developed the innovative process route of directly producing HMDA from caprolactam.

Given the disruptive, pioneering, and strategic value of this achievement, Shandong Province has designated China Risun Group’s project as a provincial key engineering initiative.

China Risun’s Core Industrial Advantages and Competitiveness

The commissioning of the HMDA project highlights China Risun’s strengths in industrial synergy and R&D innovation, significantly enhancing its core competitiveness in nylon new materials and consolidating its leadership position in the chemical industry.

1. Stable and Efficient Industrial Synergy 

The stable operation and full-scale production of the HMDA plant will synergize with the Group’s existing 810,000-ton/year caprolactam industry chain and upstream production lines at Yuncheng Industrial Park, including adipic acid, cyclohexanone, and nitric acid. This integration enables resource complementarity, technological upgrading, capacity expansion, and maximized efficiency.

China Risun Group has a strong foundation in the aromatics industry chain, extending from benzene to caprolactam to HMDA, and further downstream into high-end industries such as polymer chips, fiber spinning, weaving, injection molding, modification, and polyurethane. This accelerates the construction of a full nylon 6 + nylon 66 + specialty nylon industry chain covering “upstream raw materials – midstream monomers – downstream products.”

2. Continuous R&D and Innovation Capacity

Compared with traditional processes, the caprolactam-to-HMDA technology offers clear advantages: simplified process flow, lower investment costs, higher safety, and improved raw material conversion rates.

Both the process and catalyst are protected by China Risun’s independent intellectual property rights, breaking through domestic and international technical barriers in polyamide raw materials and filling a critical gap in China.

3. Ongoing Process Optimization and Cost Reduction

China Risun’s caprolactam-to-HMDA technology achieves significantly lower unit production costs compared with the butadiene route. Future integration of R&D and production will further reduce operating costs.

As the world’s second-largest caprolactam producer, China Risun’s scale advantages, industry chain integration, and comprehensive supporting infrastructure make its HMDA products highly cost-competitive.

Future Planning and Development Strategy

Around the caprolactam industry chain, China Risun Group has already developed and reserved multiple technologies and products, including HMDA and elastic nylon. With the continuous stabilization and upgrading of its core technologies, China Risun will expand its scale and inject new momentum into China’s nylon 66 and related industries.

Looking ahead, China Risun Group will remain committed to innovation-driven development and service-oriented growth, deepening its vertically integrated model, strategically cultivating high-end chemicals and new materials, and systematically strengthening its new materials portfolio. The company is dedicated to helping China further overcome chemical and new materials technology barriers, building a modernized, autonomous, and controllable industrial system, and achieving domestic substitution of key materials such as nylon 66—contributing China Risun’s strength to the nation.

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