As the birthplace of China’s modern chemical industry and one of Asia’s earliest large-scale soda ash producers, Tianjin Soda Plant (with Tianjin Bohua Yongli Chemical Industry Co., Ltd. as its core operating entity) was founded in 1917. Over more than a century of evolution, it has not only witnessed the full journey of China’s national chemical industry—from scratch, from catching up to global leadership—but also completed a critical transition from a single soda production factory to a modern chemical industry cluster amid the wave of industrial upgrading and green transformation, standing as a typical example of high-quality development for traditional chemical enterprises in China.
The history of Tianjin Soda Plant is a chronicle of self-reliance and technological advancement in China’s chemical sector. Its predecessor can be traced back to Jiuda Refined Salt Factory, established in Tanggu, Tianjin in 1914 by patriotic industrialist Fan Xudong. In 1917, Yongli Soda Ash Company was formally founded as China’s first private soda ash manufacturer.
At that time, China’s soda ash market was completely monopolized by Britain’s Brunner Mond Company. During World War I, disrupted Eurasian shipping sent imported soda prices surging severalfold, triggering widespread shutdowns among domestic downstream enterprises in dyeing, glassmaking, food processing and other sectors. Against this backdrop, Fan Xudong, alongside chemical industry pioneer Chen Tiaofu and other partners, resolved to manufacture soda from local salt. He recruited US-educated chemical engineer Hou Debang to return to China as chief engineer, launching independent research into domestic soda production technology.
After six years of iterative experiments, Hou Debang’s team successfully unlocked the core technology of the Solvay (ammonia-soda) process, which had been strictly blockaded by Western powers. In 1926, "Red Triangle" brand soda ash, with a purity exceeding 99%, achieved stable mass production. That same year, it won the gold medal at the 1926 Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exposition, hailed by the organizing committee as "a symbol of China’s industrial progress", and completely broke the decades-long Western technological and market monopoly over the soda ash industry. In 1930, the product claimed another gold medal at the Belgian Industrial and Commercial Exposition, marking the first time a Chinese chemical product reached world-class standards.
Following the full outbreak of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the factory’s core technical team relocated westward to Wutongqiao, Sichuan, carrying technical drawings and equipment to build a new production base named "New Tanggu". Confronted with the high cost of inland well salt and soaring raw material expenses, Hou Debang’s team spent years conducting over 500 cyclic trials. In 1941, they successfully invented the Hou’s Combined Soda Process (later officially named the combined soda process).
This technology deeply integrates synthetic ammonia production with soda ash manufacturing, lifting salt utilization from 70% (under the Solvay process) to over 96%, cutting production costs by 40%, and converting soda-making waste liquor into agricultural ammonium chloride fertilizer. It fundamentally solved the industry-wide problem of waste residue and liquid pollution from traditional ammonia-soda production. In 1953, the technology was awarded No. 1 Invention Certificate of the People’s Republic of China, and it remains one of the world’s mainstream soda ash production processes to this day.
As the core entity of the historic "Yongjiu-Huang" alliance (Yongli Soda Plant, Jiuda Refined Salt, Huanghai Chemical Industry Research Society), Tianjin Soda Plant is recognized alongside Nankai University and Ta Kung Pao as one of the "Three Treasures of Tianjin", and stands as a key cultural symbol of the spirit of China’s modern national industry.
After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Tianjin Soda Plant underwent public-private partnership restructuring and industry consolidation. Today it is a core backbone enterprise under Tianjin Bohai Chemical Industry Group Co., Ltd. It completed corporate system reform in 2013 and was officially renamed Tianjin Bohua Yongli Chemical Industry Co., Ltd.
To align with urban functional upgrading and industrial restructuring, Tianjin Soda Plant launched its relocation and modernization project in 2005, constructing a 2-square-kilometer new production base in Lingang Economic Zone, Tianjin Binhai New Area, which went fully operational at the end of 2010. Led by advanced coal gasification facilities, the new site has established a diversified industrial landscape with coordinated development of marine chemicals, coal chemicals and petrochemicals, entirely moving beyond its traditional identity as a single-product soda ash factory:
To date, the company has filed over 300 patents, including 145 invention patents. It is a national high-tech enterprise, and has been inscribed on the "China Time-honored Brands" list and the ranking of China’s Top 500 Petroleum and Chemical Enterprises.
In recent years, amid the global low-carbon transition of the chemical industry, Tianjin Soda Plant has built on its century-long technical heritage to make green and low-carbon development a core strategy, advancing in-depth upgrades in energy conservation, carbon reduction, circular economy and new energy deployment.
On the production side, the company continues to reduce unit product energy and material consumption through full-process process optimization and intelligent equipment upgrading. Through industrial flue gas purification and recovery technology, it captures carbon dioxide generated during production and processes it into food-grade liquid carbon dioxide products, realizing resourceful, high-value utilization of carbon emissions and forming a model circular economy system.
On energy structure transition, the plant’s distributed photovoltaic power generation project has been connected to the grid and put into operation. Meanwhile, it is deeply integrated into Tianjin’s hydrogen energy industry layout, collaborating with leading energy enterprises to explore process coupling between green hydrogen production and chemical manufacturing, driving the low-carbon and clean upgrading of traditional coal chemical operations.
Riding on the industrial cluster advantages of Lingang Economic Zone in Binhai New Area, Tianjin Soda Plant is steadily evolving into a composite enterprise covering "basic chemicals + fine chemicals + new materials + new energy". While consolidating its market position in soda ash and other traditional products, it continues to expand into high-value-added advanced chemical materials, pushing the industry steadily up the value chain.
From a spark of national industry on the salt flats of Tanggu to a modern chemical base in Lingang Industrial Zone, Tianjin Soda Plant’s century-long development has always moved in lockstep with China’s national progress. The "Yongjiu-Huang" ethos—"uphold science, develop industry, prioritize collective interests, serve the society"—has been passed down through generations, and remains the internal driving force behind the enterprise’s continuous innovation.
Against the backdrop of dual carbon goals and industrial upgrading, this century-old soda plant is taking technological innovation as its core engine, exploring a viable path for the green transformation of traditional chemical enterprises, and writing a new chapter for China’s national chemical industry in the new era.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Website:https://www.tianjin-soda-plant.com/
Phone:+8615380400285
Email:sales2@liwei-chem.com
