(Yicai Global) April 23 -- Shanghai NAR Industrial’s shares [SHE:002825] have again remained at 10 percent throughout morning trading on the signing of a contract to supply 182 tons of meltblown fabric, a key mask production material.

Shanghai NAR Industrial was up 10 percent at a 12 month-high of CNY18.81 (USD2.70) this morning.

Delivery of the 182 tons of the felt-like fabric will be finished by the end of June, according to the supply contract it penned with the buyer Comix Business Machine Shenzhen, NAR Industrial said in a statement yesterday, which omitted financial detail involved in the above-mentioned contract, just saying the goods will be delivered by stages and in batches, with Immediate receipt and payment based on contract terms.

This is the second big order the Shanghai-based firm penned in a week. The firm announced on April 16 it had signed a deal to supply 100 tons of melt-blown fabric, from April to July to Shenzhen-based electric car cum-mask maker BYD's purchasing unit BYD Shenzhen Supply Chain Management. The CNY20 million payment for the first two months was settled after the pair signed the contract, with the supply price for June and July to be determined based on the product's market prices through negotiation.

BYD, which has quietly become the world’s biggest face mask maker during the Covid-19 pandemic, has secured permission to sell its masks in the US, according to a statement on the website of the country’s Food and Drug Administration. BYD will also supply Japanese conglomerate Softbank Group with 300 million masks a month, |Softbank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son tweeted on April 11. One hundred million of these are N95 masks, with a filtration rate of 95 percent, and 200 million are surgical masks.

Since China has ramped up its face mask production, the cost of the felt-like non-woven fabric has risen to up to 10 to 20 times, and this bonanza has lured some companies that did not produce the polymer cloth to install new production lines to make it, with NAR Industrial a listed company with a larger capacity.

Meltblown is produced by melting polypropylene granules, with the resulting molten polymer extruded through spinnerets into continuous filaments that are cooled and deposited on to a conveyor belt to form a uniform web. The calendering process uses heat and high pressure applied through rollers to weld the fiber webs together at speed to produce a soft, uniform material, according to the website of face mask raw material maker Fuyang Sensi Trading, which is based in China’s eastern Anhui province.

Editor: Ben Armour