Four in every 10 ballpoint pens in China come from one town in Zhejiang

With domestic and overseas orders piling up, ballpoint pen factories in Fenshui town, Tonglu county, Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, are running at full tilt. The town is home to nearly 900 ballpoint pen manufacturers and related companies.

Last year, the town's pen-making industry churned out more than 8.5 billion pens, with ballpoint pens accounting for roughly 35 percent of the national market.

In the finished-product testing room of Hangzhou Dingshen New Materials Technology Co., Ltd., ballpoint pen tips as small as 0.25 millimeters in diameter are put through performance tests on equipment the company developed in-house.

Photo shows ballpoint pen tips made in Hangzhou Dingshen New Materials Technology Co., Ltd. (Photo/Hangzhou Daily)

General manager Zhao Yi said it took the company's technical team 18 months and nearly 100 trials to perfect the formula for ballpoint tips. The company now produces 2 billion ballpoint pen tips a month, exporting them to India, Italy and other countries.

The town has also pursued partnerships with universities to accelerate the commercialization of scientific and technological advances and drive the upgrading of the traditional pen-making industry.

Tonglu Jiudai Stationery Co., Ltd. has partnered with Zhejiang A&F University and rolled out bamboo pencils after eight years of efforts, said Liu Quangang, the company's general manager. The company has since established a production line in Anji county, Huzhou city, capable of turning out 80 million bamboo pencils a year, a shift expected to save 70,000 trees from being cut down annually.

A view of a workshop producing ballpoint pen tips at Hangzhou Dingshen New Materials Technology Co., Ltd. (Photo/Hangzhou Daily)

Fenshui has established a complete industrial chain encompassing raw material supply, mold processing, component manufacturing, pen assembly, logistics and trade. In 2025, the town's pen-making sector generated an annual output value of more than 8.2 billion yuan (about $1.2 billion).