In Tianwei Instrument's production workshop, workers are inspecting products.
Tianwei Instrument's digitally-enabled testing equipment.
From customized traditional flow meters to the wide application of intelligent flow sensors, Anhui Tianwei Instrument Co., Ltd. bravely sails towards the vast blue sea of the international market, leaving its mark 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 Instrument's journey to international markets is a vivid portrayal of Hefei enterprises going global, signifying that Hefei's high-end equipment manufacturing industry is moving towards a higher level of international cooperation and development.
An Overseas Order Opens the Way to the Global Market
Recently, walking into Tianwei Instrument's production workshop located in Luyang Industrial Zone, various types of automated production equipment are operating in an orderly manner, and the manufactured flow meters are neatly stacked aside, ready for export to Southeast Asia.
As a 15-year veteran employee of the company, Marketing Manager Zhou Wenwen still remembers the company's first foreign trade order vividly.
“In 2013, we joined Alibaba 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 they received the message from him. “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 after a while, he came to Hefei as promised. Upon hearing that Hary had arrived, Zhou Wenwen immediately went to meet him with her colleagues.
Zhou Wenwen told the reporter that because it was the first export order, the whole company attached great importance to it and provided relevant training for the staff. “As soon as we met, we took him to the factory for a visit. During the professional exchange, we found that many technologies were indeed different, but he highly recognized the scale of our company and directly gave me a very large drawing.”
This drawing clearly expresses the customer's personalized needs for the boiler, including the need to embed a temperature sensor and a heating element like copper wire inside the instrument. The factory needs to produce it according to the drawing and deliver it regularly.
For Tianwei Instrument, with its strong technology, producing personalized oil gauges according to customer needs is not difficult, but for a "newbie" in foreign trade, the difficulty lies in signing export agreements. “At that time, I didn't know much about most-favored-nation treatment, certificates of origin, etc., so I was constantly exploring and seeking help from the municipal commerce bureau.” After many twists and turns, this order totaling more than 400,000 yuan was successfully completed.
After manufacturing, the next step is transportation, which was also a major difficulty for industrial equipment export at that time.
“We shipped the produced flow meters to the Middle East. Because the instruments are very heavy, the air freight cost is quite high.” A month later, Hary came to Hefei again because the accompanying instrument needed valves. “Later, due to the war in his country, out of humanitarianism, Tianwei Instrument customized these valves according to the drawings and gave them away.”
In Zhou Wenwen's view, although there were some difficulties in the process, the company's sincerity and superior technology impressed the foreign customer, and this order became the starting point for Tianwei Instrument's international expansion.
A Transnational Cooperation Lasting Nearly a Decade
Founded in 2007, Tianwei Instrument is a professional flow instrument manufacturer integrating R&D, production, sales, and service. Its products cover rotary flow meters, ultrasonic water meters, turbine flow meters, etc., of various materials and Applications, widely used in the petroleum, chemical, power transportation, food and pharmaceutical industries for trade settlement and measurement.
Regarding the biggest difficulty in product export, Assistant General Manager Wu Lili said that finding customers who truly have needs and whose needs match the products is paramount.
“Our products have specific characteristics, and the biggest difficulty is how to find customers who match us. This is true not only for foreign trade but also for domestic trade.” Wu Lili told reporters that many infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia use Tianwei Instrument's products, and this region has become the company's most important overseas market.
How to find suitable customers? Wu Lili said that in addition to using major foreign trade platforms, the most important way is "referral marketing".
“Through years of accumulation, our Brand, reputation, and technology have developed overseas, and because flow instruments are very professional, many customers will come directly to us.” Wu Lili said that solid product technology and good service support are the confidence for going global. “If they recognize you, they will continue to recognize you. A customer from India has been cooperating with us for nearly 10 years, and the stickiness is very strong. They will also help us to recommend products and Brands.”
From a start-up company to an industry leader, from focusing only on the domestic market to establishing a firm foothold overseas, the growth of Tianwei Instrument is backed by continuous efforts in industrial technological transformation.
It is reported that the company has successively invested in the construction of modern standardized workshops and introduced advanced production equipment such as CNC machining equipment and digital testing instruments, greatly improving production efficiency and product quality. General Manager Kong Qingsheng took the gas testing facility of the gas testing center as an example, saying, “This equipment uses a ‘sonic nozzle’ gas testing device, providing more professional test data for the company's mass flow meters, velocity flow meters, and volumetric flow meters.”
Reporters learned that for the flow measurement industry, the production processes are the same domestically and internationally, the only difference being the different production standards in different countries. “We will formulate different standards such as European, Japanese, 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 of products overseas.
A Trillion-Yuan Industry Accelerates Innovation and Development
With the arrival of the dual-carbon era, the high-energy-consuming industries are forced to adjust their energy and industrial structures. Energy control, energy conservation and emission reduction, and smart manufacturing have become new market demands, which have given Tianwei Instrument 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 effects of energy conservation and emission reduction.”
Starting from a single drawing to developing products with independent intellectual property rights, today Tianwei Instrument has grown into a "national high-tech enterprise" in the field of intelligent flow measurement, and the Tianwei Instrument Brand has successfully entered the domestic and international high-end markets.
Kong Qingsheng told reporters that behind this is the company's consistent adherence to independent innovation and the development of the real economy. Not only has it integrated the scientific research strength of domestic first-tier universities such as University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei University of Technology, and Guangdong University of Technology, with over 20 core patents and software copyrights, it has also passed international quality management system, occupational health management system certification, and environmental system certification. The company won the honorary title of Anhui Province's "Specialized, refined, and new" small and medium-sized enterprises in 2019.
In recent years, through continuous R&D investment, the company's technological level in areas such as rotary flow meter manufacturing has reached the leading position in the industry, 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 current market demand; on the other hand, we need more opportunities to go global. In the future, we hope to replace more first-tier foreign products."
At present, the company has recruited numerous employees with high educational backgrounds and English proficiency. There are no issues with personnel or technology. The next step is to expand the product line and market, with more opportunities to shine in overseas markets. "We will continue to accelerate the construction of the Internet of Things platform system, deepen the integrated application of mobile IoT in manufacturing, energy, water, chemical, and transportation sectors, 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 exceeding 100 billion yuan in scale and is currently in a critical period of growth and development.
In the future, Hefei will build more technology supply and demand and display and trading platforms for the equipment manufacturing industry, promote the application of major first-of-its-kind technical equipment, accelerate the stimulation of new productive forces, and promote the high-end equipment manufacturing industry to enter the "fast lane" of innovative development.
·Reporters Li Runyuan, Wang Hao, and intern Amy, text/photos·
