The sport of badminton has become increasingly popular in China, triggering a rise in the price of badminton shuttlecocks and giving a boost to the badminton supplies industry in Jinping County, southwest China's Guizhou Province.

Jinping County, with a diverse ethnic population, was once a poverty-stricken county. With the introduction of the badminton brand Reinforced Shuttlecocks Limited (RSL) in 2017, Jinping started to produce badminton-related equipment.

At present, more than 100,000 badminton shuttlecocks are produced in Jinping County and transported to the world every day.

With a total investment of 248 million yuan (34.12 million U.S. dollars) and covering an area of 153 mu (10.2 hectares), the Guizhou RSL Sports and Cultural Industry factory has created over 500 jobs and is producing shuttlecocks at full speed.

Through several years of development, the output value of the company reached 340 million yuan (46.7 million U.S. dollars) last year, its production of badminton shuttlecocks surpassed 4 million dozen, with a total export value of nearly 9 million U.S. dollars, and the company's products are sold to more than 60 countries and regions worldwide.

"We have calculated that about one out of every ten shuttlecocks in the world is produced here," said Hu Bing, the company's production manager, adding that the goods are shipped out as soon as they are produced.

In the first half of this year, the factory produced more than 2.3 million dozen of badminton shuttlecocks, with an output value of 185 million yuan (25.45 million U.S. dollars), and exports have increased by 40 percent year-on-year since the same period last year.

"More and more people are taking care of their health and exercising. Last year we saw the promising market of the whole badminton production, so we expanded our equipment and personnel in advance," Hu explained.

In addition, Hu said that the price increase of upstream raw materials has also made the price of the whole production chain rise, which has led to rising prices of badminton products.

"This impact is more obvious to small factories, and for large factories, there are both challenges and opportunities," Hu added.

For example, this year, Hu's company expanded production capacity, and also upgraded the production process and reduced the waste of raw materials, aiming to bring down the price of equipment and better meet consumer demand.

A similarly busy scene also occurred at Guizhou Datongli Sporting Goods, located nearby. "Our new factory was put into operation only this month," said company chief Zhang Weiping.

Zhang said that the new factory has seen his company's production capacity double, and the company's 91 workers can produce 4,500 dozen badminton shuttlecocks per day.

"We are mainly producing high-end badminton shuttlecocks. We adopted new materials, new processes and new technologies in our new production lines to produce higher quality and higher price products. 80 percent of our products are exported, mainly to Malaysia and the U.K.," Zhang added.

Because of the surging price of badminton shuttlecocks, the popularity of badminton and other factors, the sales of nylon balls, plastic balls and other products have also increased.

"At present, there are a lot of artificial feather badminton shuttlecocks sold in the market, and some are good. But compared with natural feather badminton shuttlecocks, there is still a gap," said Hu.