Hengan Brand Guidelines: Jinjiang, 1985, and the Space 7, Anerle & Hearttex Families

A Fujian group built on several brand families.

Hengan began in 1985 in Jinjiang, a city in Fujian province in south-east China. English Wikipedia names its founders as Sze Man Bok (Shi Wenbo in Mandarin) and Hui Lin Chit (Xu Lianjie); the company’s annual report for 2025 describes Sze as one of the founding shareholders and also dates the company’s founding to 1985. The head office is still in Jinjiang, at Hengan Industrial City in Anhai Town, according to the same report.

The listed company, Hengan International Group Company Limited, is incorporated in the Cayman Islands and trades on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong under stock code 1044. Both the English and Chinese Wikipedia articles date the Hong Kong listing to 1998, and the 2025 annual report lists executive directors who have sat on the board since August of that year. Chinese Wikipedia says Hengan became a constituent of the Hang Seng Index, Hong Kong’s main benchmark, on 7 June 2011, joining at the same time as the insurer AIA.

The group grew by adding categories and names rather than by putting one name on everything. Chinese Wikipedia lists women’s and baby-care names such as Anerle alongside the household-paper name Hearttex, known in Chinese as Xinxiangyin. In March 2004, Chinese Wikipedia says, citing that year’s annual report, Hengan bought 70% of a Hong Kong business that sold the Banitore range of care and first-aid products, a name that still appears in the group’s product list.

The annual report sets out the company’s corporate spirit as “Integrity, Diligence, Innovation and Dedication,” and its 2025 edition carries the line “Growing with you for a better life” on the cover.

Space 7, Anerle, Q·MO and Hearttex.

Hengan presents itself as a house of brand families, and its 2025 annual report groups them by use. Space 7 and Anerle cover sanitary napkins, pantiliners and overnight pants; Anerle and Q·MO cover baby diapers; Hearttex and Pino cover pocket handkerchiefs, box and soft tissue and kitchen paper, with Hearttex also used for wet wipes; Elderjoy covers adult care products; and H’YEAS and Homeline cover household goods.

Much of the report’s design language is about premium lines and packaging. It describes a Space 7 series called “Tianshan Cotton,” which the company says uses long-staple cotton from the Tianshan mountains, and an upgraded Q·MO diaper series called “Royal Supreme Softness.” For tissue it describes the Fluffy Cube series, which the company calls the first tissue product in China to use through-air drying, and a Hearttex “Embracing Nature” series made, it says, from 100% virgin wood pulp in four plies.

Hearttex is where the report talks most directly about packs. In 2025 the brand released a handkerchief tissue series, “Make a Heart-to-Heart Friend,” whose packaging designs draw on the 16 MBTI personality types, and it worked with Sanrio on co-branded soft-pack and bottom-dispensing tissue aimed at younger buyers. The report says the group will keep using cross-industry IP collaborations “to refresh product imagery and packaging design” and to build “a more dynamic and youthful brand identity,” while stressing 100% virgin wood pulp as a core brand attribute.

Elderjoy is given a different voice. The report describes its brand proposition as “Brave Aging” and says it moves away from function-led positioning towards an emotional one. Hearttex, meanwhile, has stretched beyond paper: the company says the household line now includes rubbish bags, disposable gloves, food wrap film, dish detergent and paper cups.

Capacity is described in plain terms. The report says the second phase of an integrated hygiene products base at Neikeng began mass production in 2025, to serve demand for its premium ranges.

How tissue and hygiene makers present themselves.

Tissue and hygiene-paper makers mostly sell under names that are not their own. The corporate group is often a holding name, and shoppers meet it through a portfolio of consumer brands: Essity’s brands page lists TENA, Tork, Libero, Lotus and Zewa, each with a short category label and a link to its own website, while Sofidel puts Regina first and runs separate Regina sites for seven European countries alongside national names such as Sopalin, Le Trèfle and Hakle.

Consumer pack design follows those brand families rather than the parent. Brand names travel across toilet paper, kitchen towels and handkerchiefs, and some identify themselves by a physical detail: Sofidel says its KittenSoft tissue is recognisable by a heart-shaped embossing. Many brands came to their current owners through acquisitions, so a group’s portfolio often mixes a home-grown house brand with bought national names that keep their local identities.

The away-from-home side looks different again. Here the product is often a system for washrooms and other busy places, pairing paper with dispensers. Essity describes Tork as tissue and dispenser systems for professional and high-traffic environments and says more than 30 million Tork dispensers are refilled regularly; Sofidel lists away-from-home products as one of four business lines, next to its consumer brands, private label goods for retailers and parent reels, the large semi-finished reels sold to other converters.

The corporate websites then speak to a different audience: investors, job seekers, suppliers and journalists. Their pages typically set out the brands, the mills and the owners. Sofidel tells its story decade by decade from its first facility in 1966, and Essity explains its business areas and its 2017 origin as a spin-off from SCA. Sustainability sections on forests, water and plastics sit alongside those histories, written in each company’s own words.

From Jinjiang to Malaysia.

The 2025 annual report treats international development as a separate business line. Its main foothold abroad is the Wang-Zheng Group in Malaysia, held through Wang-Zeng Berhad, a non-wholly owned subsidiary listed on the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia. The report says Wang-Zheng makes fibre-based products, including adult and baby disposable diapers, tissue, cotton products and processed papers, under brands such as P Love and Carina, and that the group uses it as a base to bring Hengan’s tissue and adult diapers to Southeast Asia. The report also says Sunway Kordis and its subsidiaries give the group sales channels for exports to overseas markets, including Australia and Asia.

The same report lists the recognition the group cites for its brands in 2025. It cites a place among the ten brands most chosen by Chinese consumers in Worldpanel’s Brand Footprint 2025 for the Chinese market, a set of 2025 awards from the Tmall platform, including ones for Hearttex and Space 7, and an annual champion award for Hearttex from JD Supermarket.

Hengan’s identity is therefore spread across names rather than gathered under one mark. The group name appears on the annual report, the stock listing and the industrial park in Jinjiang; on shelves, buyers meet Space 7, Anerle, Q·MO, Hearttex or Elderjoy, each with its own range and tone.

For a design guide, Hengan shows how a group can run separate consumer brand families from one corporate base, and how a tissue brand can lean on licensed characters and personality-type themes to keep packs fresh for younger buyers. Compare Vinda, another Chinese tissue and hygiene maker founded in 1985, and Essity, the Swedish hygiene group behind Tempo and Tork. For this guide we use plum, petal and harbour blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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