Shaoxing Mujia Textile runs digital print on cotton with no screen fee, but pre-treatment, ink coverage and order size still set the price. The programme offers 20 floral designs on double gauze and 108 colourways on poplin.

Zhuji, China – November 12, 2026 – Shaoxing Mujia Textile has moved its cotton print programme entirely to digital, which removes the screen fee that rotary printing charges per colour, and has published where the cost goes instead: pre-treatment, ink coverage and order size.

Rotary screen printing needs one engraved screen per colour. Six colours means six screens, each a fixed charge that exists whether the run is 300 metres or 30,000. On a small order the screens can cost more than the cloth. Digital printing has no screen: the design goes from a file to a print head, and a small run becomes viable.

The screen fee does fall, and the total cost does not fall by the same amount. The press still has to be set up, the ink still has to be bought, and the cloth still has to be prepared. Those three costs do not disappear when the screen does. They stop being visible as separate lines on an invoice, which is not the same thing.

Pre-treatment is the first. Cotton does not accept pigment or reactive ink without a preparation step: the cloth is padded with a treatment bath that makes the fibre receptive, then dried. Skip it and the print looks correct on the day and fades in the first wash. The cost is per metre and does not fall with order size, which makes it the step most likely to be cut by a supplier quoting an unusually low price.

Ink coverage is the second. Digital ink is charged by volume, and volume follows how much of the surface is covered. A small motif on a cream ground uses a fraction of the ink a full-coverage floral does. On the double gauze base, M4011 greige at 140 GSM (grams per square metre) and 135 cm, the digital print surcharge runs about US$0.37 per metre on top of the greige cost. That figure assumes normal coverage. A full-bleed dark ground can double it. A single print price for every design is an average across designs, and a design with heavy coverage may cost more than that average.

Order size is the third, and it is the one buyers notice. Setup is a fixed cost, so it spreads across the run. The same cloth, the same print and the same lead time carry a different price at 300 m and at 2,000 m, and the difference is arithmetic rather than negotiation. A buyer ordering 300 m in five colourways pays setup five times; a buyer ordering 1,500 m in one colourway pays it once. The second buyer gets a cheaper garment and a narrower range, and that trade is the actual decision.

“Digital printing removed the screen fee and buyers assumed the cost had gone,” says Emily Zhou, founder and director of Shaoxing Mujia Textile Co., Ltd. “It moved. Pre-treatment and ink volume are per metre and they do not fall with order size, so a small order is still a small order.”

The programme carries 20 floral designs at 3 colourways each on the double gauze base, plus a separate European collection on 100% cotton poplin at 18 designs and 108 colourways. Neither number is a ceiling. With no screen to engrave, a design that is not on the list costs a file and a strike-off rather than a plate fee and a higher minimum. The list is what is ready; the range is whatever artwork arrives.

Using a ready design skips the strike-off cycle and shortens lead time. Using original artwork costs one extra round trip and returns a design specific to the buyer.

Before approving a strike-off, buyers are advised to print a 30 cm length, wash it at 40 C with a detergent that contains no optical brightener, and dry it flat. Compare against the unwashed strike-off. A colour shift beyond one step on the grey scale, the standard card used to rate colour change, means the pre-treatment or the fixation was short, and crocking, colour rubbing off onto a white cloth, means the same. Then measure the design’s position against the selvedge: digital print can drift over a long run, and a motif sitting 5 mm off at metre 250 leaves the cutting layout wrong for the second half of the roll.

The mill weaves in Fengqiao, Zhuji, on 30 Lenado air-jet looms in a 5,000 square metre shed, about five million metres a year. It does not print. Digital printing runs at partner mills and the mill holds the strike-off and colour approval between the buyer and them, with AQL 2.5 inspection, the acceptable quality limit sampling level, and a four-point check on every roll.

Specifications and both print collections are on the digital print page, https://mujiatextile.com/digital-print.html.

About Shaoxing Mujia Textile Co., Ltd.

Shaoxing Mujia Textile Co., Ltd. is a weaver of cotton and velvet fabrics in Zhuji, Zhejiang, founded in 2012. It runs 30 Lenado air-jet looms in a 5,000 square metre plant and produces about five million metres of woven fabric a year. Standard terms are 300 m per colour, 10 to 15 days after colour confirmation, FOB China port, with AQL 2.5 inspection and a four-point check on every roll. Company profile and full range at the Shaoxing Mujia Textile website, https://mujiatextile.com.

Media Contact:
Name: Emily Zhou
Company: Shaoxing Mujia Textile Co., Ltd.
Email: shaoxingtextile@coze.email
Phone: +86 151 5752 5252
Address: No.5 Wenchuang Road, Fengqiao Town, Zhuji, Zhejiang 311811, China
Website: https://mujiatextile.com