China National Petroleum Corp's petrochemicals branch in Jilin was known as the Jilin Chemical Industry Co before it was merged with its current parent firm in 1998.

The Jilin Chemical Industry Co was built in 1954 as China's first large-scale chemical industry base, produced dyes, chemical fertilizers and calcium carbide.

Overcapacity in the industry, the economic slowdown and weakening market demand in the past three years have aggravated uncertainties and risks to the company's operation.

To overcome these difficulties, the company has raised its employees' awareness of possible crises, improved its management and boosted innovation.

Last year, the company processed 8 million metric tons of crude oil and 670,000 tons of ethylene. Its main business revenue reached 46.6 billion yuan ($7.179 billion), and it paid 11.2 billion yuan in taxes, a steep rise of 32 percent year-on-year.

In the first quarter of this year, the company grabbed opportunities in the market's recovery to expand production. By the end of March, it had processed 2.24 million tons of crude oil, and 190,000 tons of ethylene. Its main business income was 11.3 billion yuan and it paid 3.3 billion yuan in taxes, up 5 percent year-on-year.

The company lost 6.9 billion yuan in 2012. However, in the first three months of this year, the branch's profit from its refining and chemical businesses was 770 million yuan. During the same period last year, it lost 400 million yuan in those sectors.

General Manager Sun Shuzhen said: "State-owned companies should change their image of always incurring losses. Our workers are a dependable force. If the market environment remains as it is, our company can forever get rid of the situation of losing money."

Sun also said enterprises have no "right of existence" if they don't have new products.

The company ended its losses this year, after producing new products, such as Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, polyethylene pipe material and aviation kerosene. Its research and development team for ABS made key breakthroughs in production technology after more than 1,300 experiments last year. The company made 475 million yuan in profit from its ABS production.

The R&D team in the high alcohols factory found new ways to remove impurities and nitride oxides in the processing of crude oil. Because of those findings, the company can produce aviation kerosene with higher added value. Di Hong, director of the factory, said: "The price of our aviation kerosene is 500 yuan more than that of 1 ton of diesel. The factory's sales revenue increased five times from 2013 to 2015. The high added-value product has saved the factory."

Qiu Ke, Party chief of the company, said: "The innovation concept is ingrained in people's hearts in this venture. I cherish contributions from teamwork as well as individual employees, be it a technology innovation or a valuable suggestion."

Qiu said the company will upgrade its utility boilers to make them more environmentally friendly, make the gas they produce cleaner and replace ethylene glycol with ethylene oxide. He said the company will focus on the research and development of new technologies and products, and the upgrading of production facilities. According to Qiu, the company's target this year is to process 9.1 million tons of crude oil and 800,000 tons of ethylene. Its main business revenue is expected to reach 60 billion yuan, with a net profit of more than 1.5 billion yuan and 13 billion yuan in tax paid.

"Meanwhile, there should be no serious job-related accidents, and no environmental pollution incidents," Qiu said.