The end of the year and the beginning of the new year is the busiest time for all industries, especially in this period of change that continues the "new normal," as everyone is busy taking stock and summarizing, planning for the future, and Lovol Heavy Industry is no exception. In addition to the business annual meetings of major business divisions being held one after another, the tasks for 2016 must also be fully communicated to every dealer and service provider attending the meetings. On January 6, the 2016 Business Annual Meeting of Lovol Heavy Industry's Lovol Apos Agricultural Equipment was held in Weifang. "First, I want to introduce why our name has changed?"
Wang Yurong, Executive Deputy General Manager of Lovol Heavy Industry and General Manager of Lovol Apos Agricultural Equipment, stated that this is because after Lovol Heavy Industry successfully acquired Italy's national treasure-level century-old brand Apos and MaterMacc, renowned in Europe for the research, development, and manufacturing of precision seeders, in 2015, it registered and established Lovol Apos Group Co., Ltd. (abbreviated as Lovol Apos Europe) by integrating Lovol's European assets, which will become an important support for the company's future expansion into the international high-end agricultural equipment market.
Brand Value, Quality First
High-quality products are an important support for brand value. At the theme conference, Wang Yurong, Executive Deputy General Manager of Lovol Heavy Industry and General Manager of Lovol Apos Agricultural Equipment, led his team on stage to release the "Lovol Apos Agricultural Equipment 13th Five-Year Quality Blue Book," which made detailed plans for the future quality upgrade of Lovol Apos agricultural equipment products and made a solemn commitment to quality goals. This move was a first among business annual meetings of enterprises in the agricultural machinery industry, greatly boosting the confidence of nearly a thousand dealer and service provider representatives in future development.
As is well known, "too much and too little" is a common problem faced by all machinery manufacturing industries, including the agricultural machinery industry. "Too much" refers to excess low-end production capacity, low product quality, and high homogenization; "too little" refers to insufficient product personalization, making it difficult to meet mid-to-high-end market demand.
"The internal causes of the difficulties faced by industry enterprises are many, and it is not simply overcapacity, but a mismatch between production and sales demand," Wang Yurong said. Many enterprises produce products that are largely not targeted at demand, with a single structure and no differentiation, low quality and homogenization, and unable to capture customers' personalized needs. Therefore, these personalized demand orders are often taken by high-end brands that value customer quality and customer experience. Relying on continuous technological progress to launch high-quality products that meet market demand will be the core focus of the transformation and upgrading of the domestic agricultural machinery industry. Of course, it will still take a long time for China's agricultural machinery industry to fundamentally solve this problem, but Lovol Heavy Industry is undoubtedly ahead of the industry. "Simple imitation and digestion and absorption cannot produce truly replacement products; without good products, how can we catch up with and surpass competitors?" Wang Guimin, Chairman and General Manager of Lovol Heavy Industry, also emphasized technological leadership and quality improvement in his speech at the conference.
In Wang Guimin's logic of seeking change, high-quality products rely on high-level design at the front end and modern lean manufacturing at the back end, with the flexibility of marketing style as the ultimate safeguard. To achieve high standards at the source of product design, it is not enough to work behind closed doors in one's "own backyard." Opening one's eyes and "going global" to seek suitable technical routes and relying on internationally advanced R&D foundations and technical talent is a prudent choice for Lovol Heavy Industry.
Since 2011, Lovol Heavy Industry has actively gone global, setting up R&D institutions in Europe, Japan, and other places, steadily accumulating strength on the global high ground of core technologies, and then suddenly exerting force to complete a series of overseas acquisitions. Through vigorous integration of high-quality overseas assets, especially the successful integration of a group of highly competitive core high-end talent worldwide, it has further laid a solid foundation for breakthroughs in high-end core technologies and transformation and upgrading. After more than five years of arduous efforts, a new generation of Lovol Apos series tractors and Lovol MaterMacc precision seeders with fully independent intellectual property rights and internationally aligned technology have been launched one after another. This not only marks a solid step for Lovol Heavy Industry in breaking through high-end core technologies but also leads and drives the overall progress of the domestic agricultural equipment industry. In this process, the Lovol Apos agricultural equipment business has also initially established a global operating system of "China headquarters + Europe."
The reporter learned that in order to better meet the needs of different types of markets, in the future, products under Lovol Heavy Industry's Lovol Apos agricultural equipment business will adopt a dual-brand positioning strategy: Lovol Gauson and Lovol Oubao products will be positioned in the global mid-range market; power-shift tractors, large grain harvesting machinery, and Lovol MaterMacc precision seeders under the Lovol Apos brand will be positioned in the global high-end market. A full range of products with clear market positioning and reliable product quality will become strong support for the Lovol brand to go global.
First Full-Process Solution Provider
Of course, with good products and brands, whoever can firmly grasp market demand and customer needs will be invincible. Especially at present, with the advancement of land transfer policies, the trend of large-scale planting is becoming increasingly obvious. Farmers' professional cooperatives, agricultural machinery professional cooperatives, large grain growers, and large agricultural machinery households have become the main body of grain production, and they have also become the main target customers. "Plowing, sowing, managing, harvesting, storing, and transporting" are the key links in current domestic agricultural production. Undoubtedly, full-process planning of agricultural production links and unified-standard operating machinery are the key to ensuring the smooth advancement of these links and increasing production and ensuring harvest. With the filling of Lovol Apos agricultural machinery in 2015 and the successive launch of drying equipment and plant protection sprayer equipment, Lovol Heavy Industry has become the only independent brand in China that can provide full-process mechanized agricultural solutions.
In terms of "plowing," Lovol Apos Agricultural Equipment currently has a series of tillage machinery such as reversible plows and rotary tillers, which, in conjunction with Lovol Oubao high-horsepower tractors, achieve compound operations such as deep loosening and land preparation. In "sowing," Lovol has launched the MaterMacc precision seeder, filling the gap in domestic high-end seeder products and technology. The "managing" link includes plant protection sprayers.
"Harvesting" is where Lovol Apos Agricultural Equipment has an advantage, especially the Lovol Gauson wheat harvester, which has ranked first in China for many consecutive years. Of course, the most important part of the entire agricultural production process is "storage," which relates to whether the grain from a bumper harvest can ultimately be converted into food rations and industrial raw materials. At present, multiple products represented by the Lovol 5XHW series have been fully launched. With advanced drying structures and processes, combined with precise and simple control systems, Lovol dryers are ready to welcome a bumper grain harvest.
At this business meeting, the award ceremony for the 2015 "Mechanical Harvest Expert" selection activity sponsored by Lovol was also held. A total of 830 agricultural machinery operators from all over the country were awarded the title of national and regional Lovol "Mechanical Harvest Expert." It is reported that the Lovol "Mechanical Harvest Expert" selection activity has been successfully held for three consecutive sessions, and a total of 2,484 "experts" have been selected. In addition to providing abundant products and comprehensive services, Lovol Heavy Industry has also signed the "Strategic Cooperation Agreement on Disaster Emergency Mechanical Harvest Teams" with key major grain-producing areas, focusing on solving the rush harvest of grain caused by rainy weather during the "three summer" and "three autumn" periods in these regions. The aim is to achieve timely harvesting of bumper grain by quickly organizing mechanical harvest teams and service teams, systematically enhancing emergency response capabilities for disaster resistance and reduction, and maximizing the protection of local food security.
The launch of these services not only strengthens users' personal experience of the Lovol brand, products, and services, allowing users to feel the excellent performance of Lovol Apos agricultural equipment products during operations, but also, through a series of product knowledge and operation skills training carried out through the centralized selection of the activity, provides a good platform for communication and exchange of product use and operation experience among users.
For Lovol Heavy Industry, these strategically visionary measures have greatly enhanced "user stickiness," pointing behind the scenes to locking in future large-scale customers, enabling them to establish loyalty to Lovol Apos agricultural equipment products and make repeat purchases.
At the meeting site, Lovol Heavy Industry also signed the "Strategic Cooperation Agreement on Agricultural Mechanization Technology Promotion" with the Agricultural Mechanization Technology Development and Promotion Station of the Ministry of Agriculture. Focusing on the full-process mechanized production of major crops such as wheat and corn, the two parties will carry out in-depth cooperation in model exploration, seminars on new agricultural mechanization technologies, and implementation of demonstration and promotion activities, effectively advancing the full-process mechanization of major grain crop production, promoting the integration of agricultural machinery and agronomy, and transforming agricultural production and operation methods.