On Mar. 28th, 2008, Mrs. Zhao Yali, Secretary-General of CBIA, visited Hefei Zhongchen Light Industrial Machinery Co., Ltd. and had a talk with President Xia Yaowu, General Manager Zha Zhengwang and other top executives of the Company.

Mr. Zha introduced the production and operation of the Company. Covering an area of about 49000 m2, having 370 employees and manufacturing equipment including a 1200-ton hydraulic press, and being capable of making large parts by itself, the Company provides filling machines for three main categories of bottled water, carbonated drink and hot-filled beverage. The number of orders received in the 1st Quarter is satisfactory, which has made a good beginning for the Company’s production in 2008.

In early 2008, Anhui was attacked by the heaviest snow in 50 years. All the members of the Company were solidly united in fighting against the snowstorm and freezing, guaranteeing the production and operation, and trying to reduce the lost. At same time, they intensified the contact and explanation with the clients and got their kind understanding and agreements on delays in delivery. When talking about the orders received this year, Mr. Zha expressed that bidding is beneficial to the development of a company. By bidding, a company can really take part in the market competition with fairness, justness and transparency, it can also know more about its clients and competitors and work out its development strategy based upon what it has realized.

He added that the Company’s main pressure lies in the increase in production cost. Many funds are occupied due to the Company’s operation, some precision parts must be paid net, but the clients usually pay 10~30% of the amount when placing an order, all these have led to difficult working of funds in the Company. They have to make continuous communication with the clients and try to get understanding and support from them.  

Regarding Chinese enterprises taking part in international bidding, Mr. Zha said that 36000 b/h filling lines made by domestic companies with high production capacity can absolutely used to substitute the imports. Domestic maintenance/service and spare parts also enjoy advantages over the imports. Nowadays, Chinese beverage manufacturers have come to recognize the supplies from domestic companies and are seeking certified supplier companies to cooperate with them.  

At present, the ratio of Hefei Zhongchen’s products for China to those for foreign countries has reached 1:1. Last year, the Company’s products were delivered to 13 foreign countries. In 2008, they aim at continuously expanding the domestic market and laboriously opening up the foreign market. Mr. Zha thought that Chinese enterprises are considering how to enhance their products’ technical content and improve the level of service in order to truly strengthen their competitiveness in spite of Chinese products’ superiority in cost performance in the international market. Now, Chinese companies still provide point-to-point services and spare parts based on the needs of foreign clients. If service stations could be set up abroad, a great amount of labour and time will be saved. However, it needs to be solved how to realize it with higher specialty, more experiences and stronger engineering capability. 

He said that the competition of medium and low speed fillers is very vigorous in China, and the manufacturers are beginning to turn to the shares in the international market. He had two worries about it: 1) foreign buyers continually undercut prices with the competition among Chinese sellers; 2) the poor product quality and service of some Chinese companies (despite the nice appearance of their products) form a serious impact upon regular companies  in the international market. It’s a problem crying out for solution for the Chinese beverage machinery manufacturing industry to raise its admittance threshold.

As an excellent Chinese beverage machinery supplier, Zhongchen keeps on considering how to create more values for its clients. They think that beverage enterprises should pay more attention to the relationship between investment and efficiency. One machine is not suitable for producing all kinds of beverages. For a group company with many distributions, it’s suggested that high speed machinery be chosen and distributed in accordance with the category and specification of its beverage products. In that way, the time for product change will be shortened and the production efficiency of an entire line will be raised.

After the talk, accompanied by General Manager Zha, Mrs. Zhao visited the Company’s workshops, where the broad plant buildings, advanced machines and busy workers showed the prosperity of Hefei Zhongchen Light Industrial Machinery Co., Ltd.