Recently, product quality problems have once again been exposed in the waterproofing industry.
The Sichuan Provincial Market Supervision and Administration Bureau and the Zhengzhou Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau have successively issued notices on product quality spot inspections in 2026. A total of 5 batches of waterproof membrane products failed to pass the spot inspection, covering the two mainstream categories of wet-lay waterproof membranes and elastomer-modified asphalt waterproof membranes, involving many local small and medium-sized production companies and building materials sales stores.
Different from a single accidental quality defect, the successive exposure of unqualified cases in the two places, including cases where companies still failed to pass the re-examination, fully exposed the long-standing stubborn problems of non-standard production, lack of quality control, and cutting corners in domestic small and medium-sized waterproofing companies.
The unqualified waterproofing products exposed this time come from Sichuan and Henan, two major provinces that consume building materials. The sampling results are all official public notifications, and the data are authentic and traceable.
The Sichuan case is one in which the company still failed to pass the inspection after rectification and re-inspection, which is enough to show that the company involved has long-term and systemic production quality problems and is not a single production error.
On May 1, the official website of the Sichuan Provincial Administration for Market Regulation officially released the “Announcement on Unqualified Product Quality Supervision Spot Inspections and Reviews in May 2026”. The announcement clearly stated that the wet-lay waterproofing membrane whose nominal production unit is Qiankun Technology Development Co., Ltd., Meishan City, Sichuan Province, was judged to be unqualified in the product quality supervision spot inspections and re-examinations.
This is also the failure of the second re-inspection after the company’s products failed the initial sampling inspection and were ordered to make rectifications within a time limit. According to the relevant provisions of the “Product Quality Supervision and Spot Inspection Management Measures”, manufacturing companies that fail the re-inspection must be ordered to suspend operations for rectification. If subsequent rectifications still fail to meet the standards, they will face administrative penalties of revoking their business licenses.
The core unqualified items for this wet-lay waterproofing membrane are the adhesion and thermal aging properties. Both indicators are key parameters for the long-term stability of the waterproofing membrane, which directly determine the service life and safety of the waterproofing layer.
The unqualified thermal aging performance means that the weather resistance of this waterproof membrane is seriously substandard.
Waterproof membranes need to be exposed or enclosed inside buildings for a long time, and experience environmental tests such as high temperature exposure in summer and low temperature freezing and thawing in winter.
Thermal aging test is to simulate the performance attenuation of the product after long-term use. The national standard has rigid standards for the tensile retention rate, low-temperature flexibility, and elongation of asphalt waterproofing membranes after thermal aging.
The Sichuan company’s product failed to pass the thermal aging test, which means that the coiled material will quickly age and fail in a high-temperature environment. The material will become hard, brittle, and lose its toughness. After entering the low-temperature weather in winter, it is easy to directly crack and break, and completely lose its waterproof function.
Public industrial and commercial and regulatory records show that this is not the first time that this company has experienced quality violations. As early as 2020, it was administratively punished by the Meishan City Market Supervision Department for producing unqualified SBS modified asphalt waterproofing membranes. Over the years, the quality control system has not been improved and inferior products have continued to be delivered to the market.
In addition, the “2026 Product Quality Supervision and Spot Inspection Report (First Issue)” issued by the Zhengzhou Municipal Administration for Market Regulation at the same time also exposed quality problems in multiple batches of waterproofing membranes.
This sampling inspection in Zhengzhou covered 1,508 batches and 27 categories of mainstream building materials products from 1,141 companies in the city. The overall unqualified rate was only 5.64%. However, the unqualified rate of waterproofing membrane categories was significantly higher than the industry average. Among the 32 batches of waterproofing membranes sampled, 4 batches of products were judged to be unqualified, with a failure rate of 12.5%, which is enough to highlight the quality chaos of small and medium-sized waterproofing membrane products.
The unqualified products in Zhengzhou cover two major links: production and circulation. The production end is the elastomer-modified asphalt waterproofing membrane produced by Zhengzhou Century Fugui Waterproof Material Factory. The unqualified items are concentrated in low-temperature flexibility, and the low-temperature flexibility after thermal aging does not meet the standard; the circulation end includes Yuye waterproofing materials in Erqi District, Zhengzhou City
The waterproofing membranes sold at three terminal building materials stores, namely Materials Store, Xingyang City Yatu Building Materials Store, and Xinzheng City Hanxin Yujie New Building Waterproof Materials Store, have different product problems. In addition to thermal aging and low-temperature flexibility failure, some batches of products have core mechanical properties such as room temperature tensile strength and tear strength that are not up to standard.
A single product failure can be attributed to individual problems of the company, but continuous sampling in many places has exposed batch quality defects of small and medium-sized waterproofing companies, and similar problems have reoccurred repeatedly. This is essentially a concentrated outbreak of long-term structural shortcomings in the domestic waterproofing industry.
To this day, the domestic waterproofing industry still has not been able to get rid of the development dilemma of “overcapacity at the low end, insufficient supply at the high end, vicious low-price competition, and lack of quality control systems.” Under the dual pressure of rising raw material costs and compressed profits in the downstream market, a large number of small and medium-sized manufacturers have chosen to sacrifice quality in exchange for survival space, ultimately resulting in a long-term quality chaos in the industry.
First of all, low industry concentration and competition among small and medium-sized manufacturers are the core causes of quality chaos.
As of the end of 2025, there are more than 2,000 legally qualified waterproof building materials manufacturers in the country, but there are only more than 400 compliant companies above designated size. The top ten companies in the industry have low market concentration. The current industry structure is clearly stratified. Leading companies such as Oriental Yuhong, Keshun Co., Ltd., and Karen Co., Ltd. occupy the mid-to-high-end market, while the remaining market share is divided among thousands of small and medium-sized waterproofing companies.
A large number of small and medium-sized manufacturers have no core technology, no brand advantage, and no standardized service capabilities. The only means of competition is low price.
In order to compete for the county market, small projects, and retail home improvement orders, each company has continuously lowered its quotations, eventually forming vicious price involution. The disorderly low-price competition among small and medium-sized manufacturers has compressed the average profit margin in the low-end market of the industry, and some small and micro enterprises can only barely maintain their capital by cutting corners and materials.
Under such pressure to survive, compliant production has become a “luxury product” for small and medium-sized enterprises, and sacrificing product quality for price advantages has become an unspoken rule in the low-end market of the industry.
However, the vast majority of small and medium-sized manufacturers turn a deaf ear to the new standards and specifications, and still use the outdated formulas and production processes from ten years ago.
At the same time, small and micro enterprises generally do not have a complete quality inspection system, no professional testing equipment, no full-time quality inspection personnel, and no standardized factory inspection process. After the product is produced, it is directly loaded onto the truck for circulation. Production relies entirely on experience, and there is no way to control product performance.
In addition, the supervision of the circulation link is weak, and terminal procurement only takes the lowest price, which provides a living environment for inferior coiled materials.
This random inspection in Zhengzhou directly revealed that many building materials stores were selling substandard products, which is enough to illustrate the loopholes in the supervision of the circulation side.
The threshold for the building materials market in counties and towns is extremely low. A large number of small building materials stores can distribute goods for sale without strict review of product qualifications. In order to pursue higher profit margins, many stores give priority to low-priced and low-quality niche no-name coiled materials, abandoning compliant and high-priced brand products.
At the same time, when small-scale engineering parties and home improvement retail households purchase waterproofing products, they generally lack professional identification capabilities and only compare prices without paying attention to product qualifications, test reports, and brand reputation, further creating market demand for inferior membrane materials.
