If you look at Yueqing in the south of Zhejiang from a satellite in space, the infrared sensor on the satellite is sensitive enough to detect that in addition to the rising natural temperature, the production of enterprises is also obviously raising the surface temperature here.
In April this year, industrial electricity consumption in Yueqing increased by 11.83% compared with the same period of last year. As the hardest hit area in COVID-19, Yueqing was once pressed the “pause button” in this special spring. From this perspective, the state of Yueqing is becoming more and more valuable.
Yueqing “re-ignited”, and its leading industry, the electrical industry, took the lead. In April, the gross output value of Yueqing electric industry increased by 19.4% year-on-year. As a typical regional industrial cluster in Zhejiang, how did Yueqing electric enterprises face the epidemic? Is the initial intention of moving towards a world-class electrical industry cluster still the same today? With these questions, the reporter walked into Yueqing and looked for answers from many enterprises in the electrical industry chain.
Product orders grew against the trend.
After long summer, the temperature soared. Shi Yixin, the general manager of Zhengtai Instrument Co., Ltd., is burning with a passion in his heart-the impact of the epidemic continues, but this Yueqing intelligent instrument enterprise has been full of business in recent months and orders have continued to increase.
“The big customers who have been fighting for it before generously placed orders, and then the stable partners began to increase the order volume. Although the company quickly recovered its production capacity, it had to work overtime in the face of the sharply increased order volume in April.” Shi Yixin’s tone is hard to hide his joy. The distributed photovoltaic meter developed by Zhengtai Instrument has become the core partner of Huawei and Sunshine, the leading inverter enterprises in the world. After the outbreak, smart watt-hour meter products successfully won large orders from customers such as State Grid, China Southern Power Grid and Sichuan Energy Investment Corporation.
Walking in Zhengtai instrument workshop, the whole process of screen printing, pasting, reflow soldering and optical inspection is completed by auto production line. Seven such assembly lines enable enterprises to reach 18,000 pieces at the highest daily output. With the roar of machines, smart electric energy meters and smart gas meters sent from warehouses to all parts of the country every day account for 10% of the market.
Busy, not only in Zhengtai Instrument. In Jinqiao Copper Workshop, employees are rushing to make a batch of important spare parts for ventilators and CT products. This enterprise, which specializes in producing copper braided wires, flexible connections and related assembly parts, has cooperated with Siemens, CRRC and other Fortune 500 companies since 2010, and is an indispensable accessory manufacturer in the electrical industry.
“In the face of the impact of the epidemic, enterprises have expanded online marketing, and 80% of their customers have now moved to online sales.” Zheng Suiyan, the general manager of the company, said that in March alone, new customers from Malaysia, Mexico, Switzerland, South Korea and other networks brought in $1.6 million in new orders.
In this epidemic, there are still many Yueqing electric enterprises that have gained opportunities. 90% of Mattek’s products have been exported to the United States, and now it has opened up a new market and successfully won a new product order of 20 million yuan from Schneider. The export output value has increased instead of falling. Since this year, overseas sales have increased by 5% against the trend. Zhejiang Zhongwei smart home has been mainly exported for a long time, and now it is sold domestically through foreign trade. In the first quarter, the proportion of domestic sales increased to 70%, and sales in March increased by 26% year-on-year.
The data shows that with the leading industry, the electrical industry, resuming production and reaching production, the industrial electricity consumption in Yueqing has rapidly resumed growth. Not only that, in the first quarter of this year, the city’s industrial investment increased by 8.4% year-on-year, and the investment in high-tech industries increased by 18.5% year-on-year.
“Let products speak” has become the secret of Yueqing electric enterprises’ contrarian growth. Although the path of “Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea to Show Their Magical Powers” is realized, regardless of the size of the enterprise, this concept has been deeply rooted in the hearts of every Yueqing entrepreneur.
People’s Electric Co., Ltd. cooperated with Hong Kong Green Touch Optoelectronic Technology Co., Ltd. to develop ultra-wide color gamut DLED diamond screen, which filled the domestic technical gap. During the epidemic period, many manufacturers’ purchase orders shifted from international to domestic, which became a new growth point for enterprises. Zhejiang Kangxin Automobile Electric Appliance takes advantage of the cluster of electrical enterprises to develop and produce automobile switches and other products for well-known automobile enterprises such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Land Rover, which not only increases orders by nearly 60% year-on-year, but also forms a pricing advantage, and the price increases by 10% to 15% year-on-year.
Pursuing the ultimate in industrial support
In an interview with Yueqing, the reporter heard many people talk about the same thing: In February this year, during the most severe epidemic control period, a large number of well-known domestic enterprises sent letters to Yueqing, requesting support for their local suppliers to resume work as soon as possible to ensure the smooth operation of the supply chain. There are 137 enterprises named by Yueqing Economic and Information Bureau.
The reporter saw from the “Table of Supporting Industrial Chain of Yueqing Enterprises Returning to Work in Advance” that there are as many as 22 Yueqing enterprises that supply electrical accessories for Midea Group, from relays to various switches and other parts. Oaks, Haier, Guangzhou Automobile and other enterprises have about 10 electrical suppliers in Yueqing.
“These 137 enterprises have both supporting enterprises related to epidemic prevention materials and supporting enterprises with strong dependence on domestic key leading enterprises, all of which were’ key roles’ at that time.” Ding Jiali, director of Yueqing Economic and Information Bureau, said that the epidemic has brought new opportunities for the reconstruction of the global industrial chain supply chain, and Yueqing Electric Enterprise is integrating into the core supply chain of the head enterprise.
As early as 2015, Yueqing Electric Industry has become the first industrial cluster with a scale of over 100 billion in Wentai area. Over the past 40 years, a number of enterprises with irreplaceable advantages in the industrial chain have grown up. It is they who firmly grasped the opportunity of global industrial chain supply chain reconstruction and stood firm in a new position when the crisis struck.
Walking into the digital workshop of Chint Yueqing production base, the sound of uninterrupted operation of the machine is endless. The relevant person in charge of the supply chain of the base told the reporter that Zhengtai’s product line has a complete range, from supporting raw materials and parts to covering contacts, to engineering plastics and stamping parts, with no less than 80 processing technology categories. Among them, 90% suppliers are concentrated in Yueqing. Today, hundreds of local suppliers in the downstream of Zhengtai have all resumed production, and the response speed of the company’s supply chain has obviously accelerated.
“Making the supporting facilities as extreme as possible is the foundation of the long-lasting electrical industry in Yueqing, and it has formed the core competitiveness of the regional economy.” Huang Zhongping, secretary-general of Zhejiang Electric Industry Association, said that Yueqing electric enterprises are highly correlated, and a leading enterprise can drive hundreds of small and medium-sized enterprises in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain.
Wenzhou Yihua Connector Co., Ltd., which focuses on communication connectors, has become one of Huawei’s suppliers by virtue of its excellent products. Here, two workers can manage 120 machines. In the past, the same output required at least 300 people. This advantage has brought new opportunities to enterprises in the epidemic. Thanks to less labor and rapid recovery of production capacity, since the outbreak, Huawei has added 300 million yuan of 5G product orders on the basis of the original 850 million yuan order. “Orders increased by 35% in the first quarter.” Jiang Ganyu, deputy general manager of the company, said.
According to the announcement of pre-increase in the first quarter results issued by Yihua Co., Ltd., the company expects to achieve a net profit of 28 million yuan to 42 million yuan, an increase of 349.78% year-on-year to 574.67%. “Enterprises’ investment in intelligent technology and new product research and development has made products have an irreplaceable position in the industry.” Jiang Ganyu said.
In the early days of reform and opening up, every household in Liushi Town of Yueqing made electrical appliances. From the workshop-style factory that “every family ignites every village and smokes” to the modern industrial cluster with unique advantages led by Zhengtai, Delixi and People’s Electrical Appliances. Today, there are more than 10,000 electrical and electrical enterprises densely growing here, and the product structure covers more than 200 series, more than 6,000 categories and more than 25,000 models of specifications such as power transmission, substation, power distribution, industrial control appliances and various special-purpose electrical equipment. In addition to the huge and complete industrial chain, the fine division of labor of enterprises has also spawned nearly 20 sub-industries, and low-voltage electrical appliances account for 60% of the national market share.
“Over the years, Yueqing has adhered to the electrical industry as its main business, forming a relatively complete industrial chain, a low-cost production chain and a relatively complete logistics chain, which can never be achieved overnight.” Huang Zhongping said.
The whole chain promotion is accelerating.
At the time of crisis, it is also a good time to make up the chain and strengthen the chain. Ding Jiali was keenly aware that a large number of enterprises that laid out intelligent technological transformation in advance at the beginning of the resumption of work quickly realized the resumption of work and production under the premise of insufficient personnel, which made enterprises more deeply understand the importance of intelligent technological transformation of enterprises, and also allowed Yueqing to find a breakthrough point to drive a strong chain with policies.
The remodeling plan of Wenzhou traditional manufacturing industry was launched, and the promotion of the whole industrial chain of Yueqing electrical industry was put on the agenda as an important link.
In February this year, Yueqing issued the opinion of “Ten New Technological Innovations”. “In view of the phenomenon that’ big enterprises don’t worry about making up, small enterprises can’t make up’ in the past, this policy directly targets small and micro enterprises that are willing to face technological transformation but unable to do so.” Ding Jiali introduced that on the one hand, free technical transformation diagnosis is carried out for enterprises, on the other hand, the subsidy coverage is expanded, and the subsidy threshold is reduced from 2 million yuan to 500,000 yuan. It is expected that the scope of enterprises covered by subsidies will double. “Enterprises with an annual output value of more than 10 million yuan have the opportunity to receive subsidies.” In addition, the maximum subsidy ratio reached 30%. In order to encourage enterprises to implement large-scale intelligent technological transformation projects, the maximum subsidy amount of a single project was also raised from 10 million yuan to 12 million yuan.
“We just introduced a 1.8 million yuan pneumatic nail gun technical transformation project. In fact, we wanted to transform it last year. However, according to the policy at that time, the subsidy threshold could not be reached, and it was delayed for half a year after hesitation. ” Cai Changhong, the person in charge of Zhejiang East Asia Tools Co., Ltd., calculated an account for the reporter: according to the original subsidy threshold of 2 million yuan for technological transformation projects, he did not apply for subsidies, and the project threshold in the new policy was lowered, and the subsidy ratio reached 8%. In other words, after the acceptance of this project, it is estimated that a subsidy of 144,000 yuan can be obtained. In addition to the immediate “red envelope”, the project is expected to contribute 10 million yuan to the annual output value of the enterprise after it is put into use.
Under the policy guidance, large and small technological transformation projects were launched in Yueqing. In the first quarter of this year, there were 140 technical renovation projects in Yueqing City, of which the number of projects with more than 50 million yuan was 2.3 times that of last year.
To enhance industrial toughness, it is also necessary to solve the problem of where the new kinetic energy of products comes from. In recent years, with the siphon effect of talents in big cities such as Beishangguang becoming more and more obvious, the brain drain of local talents directly affects the ability of enterprises to develop new technologies and seize new markets. To this end, Yueqing has successively established “science and technology enclaves” in the electrical industry in Shanghai and Hangzhou to gather talents for the industry.
“The R&D base is located in Shanghai, and the outstanding talents and projects are placed in the’ enclave’, and the production base is placed in Yueqing to achieve a win-win situation for talents and supply chain, and the development of enterprises has also entered the fast lane.” Yu Rongjun, general manager of Shanghai Andeli Power Technology Co., Ltd. lamented that within one year after the enterprise settled in Yueqing Nanxiang Science and Technology Cooperation Base, three scientific research achievements that had not been attacked for a long time quickly landed, and the orders of enterprises increased by 22%. Among them, the achievements of the Internet of Things energy consumption platform have enabled enterprises to successfully “suck powder” during this year’s epidemic by virtue of contactless remote diagnosis and treatment technology.
Having tasted the sweetness, in the next step, Yueqing will also rely on the two bases to connect famous universities and scientific research institutions in Shanghai and Hangzhou, carry out Industry-University-Research activities, and lead Yueqing to promote the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, technology transfer and talent introduction.
(Source: Zhejiang Daily)