Dealing with foreign trade crisis Beilun these mold companies have ways

The picture shows the employees of Huiye Company working on the newly introduced automatic injection molding machine. (Reporter Yu Hui Na)

Affected by the debt crisis in Europe and the slowdown in the economic recovery process in some countries, the export situation of enterprises is severe, especially for small and medium sized manufacturing companies that are mainly engaged in design and development and have relatively little foreign trade experience. The foreign trade situation is even more difficult.

“The financial crisis in 2008 had little impact on us, but this time, it actually affected. In the first half of this year, the amount of exports fell by more than half year-on-year.” Faced with reporters, the area has been engaged in mold development for many years. Enterprise owners of die castings shook their heads. Then, is there a mold enterprise in the region that has not experienced a decline in its foreign trade business? How do they maintain a good foreign trade situation? Is there any other company can learn from them? To this end, the reporter conducted a survey of several mold companies in the area.

There is no lack of mold enterprises with export volume equal to or even slightly higher than the same period last year.

Hualibao (Ningbo) Mold Co., Ltd. was founded in 2004 and is located in Daxie Auto Parts Industrial Park. It is a professional manufacturer of large, medium and small precision plastic molds and plastic products. More than 90% of the company's products are exported to Japan, Europe and the United States. General Manager Le Shizhong said in an interview with reporters that from January to June this year, the company earned 4 million U.S. dollars in export earnings, a year-on-year increase of 10%. "In the second half, the increase will be even greater." Le Shizhong told reporters with a smile.

"Last year, foreign trade exported 200 million yuan, which was basically the same as last year. From January to May this year, it has exported 80 million yuan, basically the same level as last year." The person in charge of the finance department of Ningbo Chengyu Electric Appliances & Dies Co., Ltd. told reporters that Cheng Yu Company The final product is a nonstick pan and all products are exported. In recent years, overseas orders have continued to grow, but due to capacity constraints, the annual export volume has basically remained at around 200 million yuan.

An owner of a private die-casting molder located on the Minjiang South Road said that in the first half of this year, their foreign trade exports increased by more than 20% year-on-year. In an interview with reporters, the owners of mold machinery companies such as Shengji Machinery, Junling Molds, and Dongfang Auto & Motorcycle Die Casting indicated that their company’s foreign trade exports in the first half were basically the same as last year.

The expansion of quality customer business has driven the export of many mold enterprises in our district to rise against the trend.

“Growing with quality customers is the biggest reason why our foreign trade exports have risen against the trend.” Liao Shizhong, general manager of Hualibao, frankly stated that although the economic environment is not good, the development momentum of their two key customers is still very strong. Well, give them support, orders are increasing.

The quality customers of Le Shizhong are Japanese Konica Minolta and German Karcher. The former is a business partner that they began to cooperate with at the beginning of their establishment. Over the years, with excellent quality and perfect service, the relationship between Hualibao and Konica Minolta has been good. Earlier this year, Konica Minolta developed a new color copier. Naturally, they gave Hualibao orders for a total of $2 million in copier plastics. “At present, this product is very popular, and orders will be more in the second half of the year.” The domestic environmentally friendly high-pressure cleaning pump produced by Kärcher is also highly sought after by the market. In the first half of this year, the company’s orders to Hualibao exceeded. A million dollars.

The person in charge of the mold enterprise located on the Minjiang South Road told reporters that the increase in their export value also benefited from the increase in customer sales. “So, the selection of mold companies is very important to customers and it is reflected in the crisis period,” said the person in charge.

Ningbo Huiye Molding Co., Ltd. is a company that develops and manufactures air-conditioner parts molds. It has been mainly domestic trade before, and its annual export amount is less than 100,000 US dollars. Lu Xuguang, general manager of the company, said that since the beginning of this year, foreign trade orders have continued and the foreign trade situation has been more optimistic. Because a customer who has been collaborating for more than 10 years has just acquired new factories in Brazil, India, Greece and other countries, only Brazil and Greece's factories purchase air-conditioning parts for one year at RMB 4-5 billion. At present, they have begun preliminary cooperation negotiations.

Sparing no effort in technical input to improve the competitiveness of export products

According to the reporter’s visit, another commonality of these companies with better export conditions is that they have spared no effort in technical investment.

Due to the bad economic situation, many business owners have become more conservative in their investment in equipment. Lu Xuguang does not think so. In his view, the economic situation is not good, companies need to reduce product costs, improve quality and stability, and all this requires advanced equipment to support. At the end of last year, he introduced five fully automatic injection molding machines from Taiwan at one go. Recycling, heating, injection molding and other processes can be completed by the injection molding machine. Lu Xuguang said that the commissioning of automation equipment has not only saved manpower, but also significantly improved the stability of product quality, and the process qualification rate has increased by 15%. Taking an air-conditioning remote controller as an example, the discoloration of products and the appearance of black spots have become significantly less, and the production cost of individual products has also dropped by at least 2%.

In September last year, Chengyu Co., Ltd. and Ningbo University established the Catermark ("Cate-Make" transliteration research and development center for the Chengyu product brand), which is dedicated to new product development and technical research. "Since its founding, we have introduced a dozen new products every month. Among them, the mesh-type double-bottomed series non-stick pans have been favored by European and American markets. In the first half of this year, we have achieved sales of more than 3 million US dollars." . At the same time, Chengyu Co., Ltd. actively cooperates with the world's top 500 companies, DuPont, to use the new color inner coating developed by DuPont to replace the current enamel coating and produce fashionable and colorful products. Wine, dark blue, yellow and other colorful non-stick pans also led to sales. (Reporter Yu Huina correspondent Leshan Kang Shi Mengyan)