Xiaoguang New Materials Technology (Xiangxi) company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hunan Xiaoguang Technology Group company, was founded on July 22, 2022.

Located in Guzhang county industrial development zone, Hunan province, the company boasts a registered capital of 118 million yuan ($17.46 million). It is a high-tech private enterprise integrating mining, R&D, production and sales of high-end calcium carbonate and auxiliary products.

The panoramic view captures the modern production base of Xiaoguang New Materials.

Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Changsha, Hunan Xiaoguang Technology Group employs more than 700 staff. After over a decade, the group has evolved into a diversified tech conglomerate.

Its business takes automotive body molds and auto body components as its foundation, fosters new quality productive forces via non-metallic new materials, intelligent forming and intelligent equipment, and provides manufacturing services supported by a technology research institute and craftsman academy.

Hunan Xiaoguang is a national-level specialized, sophisticated, distinctive and innovative (SSDI) key "Little Giant" enterprise and a high-tech enterprise.

Advanced equipment operates continuously in the production workshop.

It is also a key backbone enterprise for automotive panel molds in China, an outstanding supplier to the national mold industry, and the chairperson unit of the Hunan Mold Association.

The group runs a provincial-level Academician and Expert Workstation and an Enterprise Technology Center and an Engineering Technology Research Center. It has has also pocketed the 8th Hunan Provincial Governor's Quality Award.

As an industry pioneer in automotive molds, Xiaoguang Technology Group has become a qualified supplier for well-known automotive brands including BYD, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Volvo, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Ford, Great Wall Motors, Geely and Xiaomi Auto.

The company covers a land area of about 172 mu (11.47 hectares) and has 173 employees. Adhering to the philosophy of sustainable development, the company will carry out phased construction under unified planning. It will gradually build a production capacity of 400,000 tons of medium-to-high-end ground calcium carbonate, 205,000 tons of high-end nano calcium carbonate and intermediate powder products, and 100,000 tons of high-end talc powder and other non-metallic mineral powders.

Eight automated and intelligent production lines will be constructed, including low-carbon calcination production lines, full-resource utilization dry-wet combined digestion production lines and high-efficiency calcite purification production lines.

Xiaoguang Technology Group also plans to build dry-wet combined submicron self-crystallization production lines for calcite, crystal form precision control normal-temperature carbonization production lines, submicron-nano particle composite modification production lines, automated drying and packaging production lines, and a pilot intelligent manufacturing line based on high-gravity carbonization technology.

The company will also build an intelligent factory based on the industrial internet and a green factory featuring full resource recycling. Guided by a comprehensive budget and strategic contro,l and centered on production intelligence, the enterprise maps production processes in real time via MES, PLC and IoT devices, and establishes a virtual-real integrated digital twin system.

This enables the dual closed-loop management as well as the firm’s energy needs to fully support green manufacturing.

An internationally advanced intelligent manufacturing plant will be completed with an annual intelligent production capacity of 205,000 tons of high-performance nano calcium carbonate, forming a major nano calcium carbonate production base in central China.

Its products are widely applied in automobile manufacturing, rubber, adhesives, environmental protection, perovskite solar cells, biomedicine, electronic packaging, stealth materials and other sectors.

Intelligent production lines run steadily inside the workshop.

Xiaoguang Technology Group owns five mines, including large calcite mines, barite mines and high-calcium limestone mines. The total reserves of large calcite ore stand at 5 million tons, while its high-calcium limestone reserves exceed 30 million tons. The company continues to develop high-quality local mineral resources in Xiangxi to guarantee stable and sustainable raw material supply for its development.

The enterprise boasts robust R&D strength. It has built an R&D building housing an R&D Center, Testing Center, Enterprise Technology Center and Engineering Technology Research Center. Its R&D team is led by top domestic experts and professors, consisting of 37 members all with bachelor's degrees or above, among whom over 15 hold postgraduate degrees and five are PhD holders.

More than 20 sets of experimental equipment including power mixers, tensile testers, extruders, double-roll mixers, twin-screw plastic extruders, injection molding machines and modification machines are available to conduct performance regulation reviews and the application verification of calcium carbonate products.

The Testing Center is equipped with over 30 sets of inspection and testing instruments, such as laser particle size analyzers, X-ray diffractometers, spectrophotometers, specific surface area analyzers, whiteness meters, moisture analyzers and consistency meters.

These devices meet the analytical and testing requirements for the full range of calcium carbonate products, with test results benchmarked against indicators of domestic and overseas clients.

The company applies self-developed advanced technologies with core equipment, and procures state-of-the-art machinery from China and overseas. Its key equipment boasts a numerical control rate of 95 percent, while the automatic collection rate of production data stands at 90 percent, and the automatic data transfer rate between the data acquisition and analysis system and the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) stands at 100 percent.

It operates over 50 sets of large-scale production facilities, including ultrafine vertical mills, ring roller mills, Raymond mills, ultrafine stirred mills, modification systems, energy-saving vertical kilns, wet digesters, dry digesters and high-gravity carbonization reactors. These facilities support the full range of calcium carbonate products, namely ground calcium carbonate, calcium hydroxide and nano calcium carbonate.

Teaming up with Hunan University, the firm has independently developed technologies and processes to produce calcium carbonate via high-gravity carbonization.

Having tackled key obstacles to industrial application, it has built an intelligent manufacturing line for 20 nanometer-grade calcium carbonate. The line breaks overseas monopolies on core technologies and products held by Japan, the United States, the European Union and other economies, enabling domestic substitution.

The independently developed Multi-layer High-speed Carbonization Reaction Tower and submicron-nano particle composite modification technology produce nano calcium carbonate for automotive applications.

Supported by self-patented surface modification technology, a dynamically reversible thixotropic network structure has been constructed by the company. This enables the precise dynamic regulation of the thixotropy of automotive base coatings, greatly improving construction adaptability and coating compactness, consolidating the performance advantages of automotive base coating materials and achieving domestic substitution.

The self-developed nano calcium carbonate specially used for polyurethane automotive industrial adhesives significantly enhances the storage stability and weather resistance of polyurethane automotive adhesives by optimizing the surface modification system.

It also successfully replaces imported products from the United States, tackling key bottleneck technologies in this field, with the overall performance reaching the leading level nationwide.