In the Tianwei Instruments production workshop, workers are inspecting products.
Tianwei Instruments' products.
Digital testing equipment produced by Tianwei Instruments.
A transnational drawing officially opened the company's journey to overseas markets. From customized traditional flow meters to the widespread application of intelligent flow sensors, Anhui Tianwei Instruments Co., Ltd. bravely sailed into the vast blue ocean of the international market, leaving footprints of "Made in China" in Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America, and showcasing the style and strength of Hefei enterprises on the international stage.
Tianwei Instruments' journey to overseas markets is a vivid portrayal of Hefei enterprises going global, indicating that Hefei's high-end equipment manufacturing industry is moving towards a higher level of international cooperation and development.
A "transnational drawing" opens the way to overseas markets
Walking into the Tianwei Instruments production workshop located in Luyang Industrial Park, various types of automated production equipment are operating in an orderly manner, and the manufactured flow meters are neatly stacked aside, ready to be exported to Southeast Asia.
As a 15-year veteran employee of the company, Zhou Wenwen, the market manager, still remembers the first foreign trade order vividly.
“In 2013, we joined Alibaba's International Station, and a person from Syria named Hary was looking for a professional oil gauge supplier and happened to see our company,” Zhou Wenwen said, feeling very surprised when receiving the message from the other party. “He listed the detailed parameters of the required instruments one by one, including the installation location on site.”
After two emails, Hary highly recognized the company's professionalism and came to Hefei as scheduled after a while.
Zhou Wenwen told the reporter that because it was the first export order, the whole company attached great importance to it and provided training to the staff from the workshop to the office. “As soon as we met, we took him to the factory for a visit. During the professional communication, we found that many technologies were indeed different, but he highly recognized the company's scale and directly gave me a very large drawing.”
This drawing clearly expresses the customer's personalized needs for the boiler, including the need to install a temperature sensor and a layer of heating material like copper wire inside the instrument. The factory needs to manufacture it according to the drawing and deliver it regularly.
For Anhui Tianwei Instruments, which has strong technical capabilities, producing personalized oil gauges according to customer needs is not difficult. However, for "foreign trade novices," the difficulty lies in signing export agreements. “At that time, I didn't understand much about most-favored-nation treatment, certificates of origin, etc., and I was constantly exploring and seeking help from the Municipal Commerce Bureau.” After many setbacks, this order totaling more than 400,000 yuan was successfully completed.
After manufacturing, the next step is transportation, which is also a major difficulty in exporting industrial equipment.
“We transported the produced flow meters to the Middle East. Because the instruments are very heavy, the air freight is quite high.” A month later, Hary came to Hefei again because the supporting instruments needed valves. “Later, due to the war in his country, out of humanitarianism, we customized and donated these valves to them according to the drawings.”
In Zhou Wenwen's view, although the process experienced some difficulties, the company's sincerity and strong technology moved foreign customers, and this order became the starting point for Tianwei Instruments' overseas expansion.
From Startup to Benchmark: Industrial Technological Transformation Takes Effect
Established in 2007, Tianwei Instruments is a professional flow instrument manufacturing enterprise integrating research, production, sales, and service. Its products cover rotary vane flow meters, ultrasonic water meters, turbine flow meters, etc., of various materials and applications, and are widely used in the petroleum, chemical, power, transportation, food, and pharmaceutical industries for trade settlement and measurement.
Today, the company's products have been exported to Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. When talking about the biggest difficulty in exporting, Wu Lili, the general manager's assistant, said that finding customers who have real needs and match the products is the top priority.
“Our products have specificity, and the biggest difficulty is how to find customers who match us. In fact, this is true not only in foreign trade but also in domestic trade.” Wu Lili told the reporter that many infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia use Tianwei Instruments' products, and this region has become the company's main overseas market. “First, we must occupy the market and make the ‘cake’ bigger.”
How to find suitable customers? Wu Lili said that in addition to major foreign trade platforms, the most important way is "old customers bringing new customers".
“Through years of accumulation, our Brand, reputation, and technology have developed overseas, and because flow instruments are highly professional, many customers will come directly to us.” Wu Lili said that solid product technology and good service support are the confidence for going overseas. “If they recognize you, they will continue to recognize you. An Indian customer has been cooperating for nearly 10 years, with strong stickiness, and will also help us recommend products and Brand.”
From a startup company to an industry benchmark, from only serving the domestic market to gaining a foothold overseas, behind Tianwei Instruments' growth is the continuous efforts in industrial technological transformation.
It is reported that the company has successively invested in the construction of modern standardized factories and introduced advanced production equipment such as CNC machining equipment and digital testing instruments, significantly improving production efficiency and product quality. Kong Qingsheng, general manager of the company, took the gas detection center's detection facilities as an example: “This equipment uses a ‘sonic nozzle’ gas detection device, providing more professional test data for the company's mass flow meters, velocity flow meters, and volumetric flow meters.”
The reporter learned that for the flow measurement industry, the production processes in China and abroad are the same, the only difference being the different production standards of different countries. “We will formulate different standards such as European standards, Japanese standards, and German standards, which will not affect the core components.” Wu Lili said that technological innovation is the core competitiveness of the enterprise and has laid a solid foundation for the company's export to overseas markets.
Broad Market Prospects: Committed to Domestic Substitution
With the arrival of the dual-carbon era, high-energy-consuming industries are forced to adjust their energy structure and industrial structure, and energy control, energy saving and emission reduction, and intelligent manufacturing have become new market demands, which has given Tianwei Instruments a broad market prospect.
“Our flow meters can measure and control various gases in steel, cement, thermal power, new energy vehicles, and new energy chemicals, thereby accelerating the research and development of cutting-edge technologies such as low-carbon emissions, improving the comprehensive utilization and recycling of resources and energy, and improving the actual effect of energy saving and emission reduction.”
Starting from a drawing, and then developing products with independent intellectual property rights, today, Tianwei Instruments has grown into a national high-tech enterprise in the field of intelligent flow metering, and the Tianwei Instruments Brand has successfully entered the domestic and international high-end markets.
General Manager Kong Qingsheng told reporters that behind this is the company's consistent adherence to independent innovation and the development of the real economy. It not only integrates the scientific research strength of leading domestic universities such as University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei University of Technology, and Guangdong University of Technology, possessing over 20 core patents and software copyrights, but has also successively passed international quality management system, occupational health management system, and environmental system certifications. In 2019, the company was awarded the title of "Specialized, Refined, Special, and New" small and medium-sized enterprise in Anhui Province.
In recent years, through continuous R&D investment, the company's technology level in the manufacturing of rotary flow meters and other areas has reached the leading position in the industry, breaking the long-term monopoly of overseas companies and becoming a domestic substitute for international first-tier Brands. Kong Qingsheng said, "On the one hand, our products are constantly being upgraded to meet the needs of the current market, and on the other hand, we need more opportunities to go global. In the future, we hope to replace more leading foreign products."
Currently, the company has recruited many employees with high educational backgrounds and foreign language skills. There are no problems with personnel or technology. The next step is to expand the product line and market, with more opportunities to emerge in overseas markets. "We will continue to accelerate the construction of the Internet of Things platform system, deepen the integrated application of mobile Internet of Things in manufacturing, energy, water, chemical, and transportation fields, promote China's high-end manufacturing to the international first-tier market, and strive to build an international high-end intelligent flow instrument production base."
Tianwei Instruments is a microcosm of the development of Hefei's high-end equipment manufacturing industry. Today, this industry has become Hefei's second industrial cluster with a scale exceeding 100 billion yuan, and is currently in a critical period of growth and strengthening.
In the future, Hefei will build more technology supply and demand and display and trading platforms for the equipment manufacturing industry, promote the promotion and application of major first-of-its-kind technological equipment, accelerate the stimulation of new productive forces, and promote the high-end equipment manufacturing industry to enter the "fast lane" of innovative development.
Hefei Tong Client - Hebei All-Media Reporter Li Runyuan/Text Wang Hao/Photo Intern Amy
