In recent years, the construction machinery industry has faced a severe and sluggish situation, only improving in the second half of 2016 in what can be called a “bottoming-out rebound.” Yet just as the industry situation began to improve, it attracted the attention of industry star Dong Mingzhu—Gree is set to enter construction machinery.
Dong Mingzhu is Chairwoman and President of Gree Electric Appliances, Inc. of Zhuhai, known as "Miss Dong." In 2017, whenever Dong Mingzhu appeared in public view, she sparked heated discussion. At the slightest disagreement, she hands out money to employees. Such a boss is truly great! Moreover, Miss Dong has a particular passion for manufacturing—whether making air conditioners, investing in electric vehicles, or this time entering the construction machinery market. She perfectly embodies what “Intelligent Manufacturing in China” means.
On December 25, 2017, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for the Gree • Handan (Wu'an) Central Plains Intelligent Equipment Basic Components Industrial Base, with total investment of 100 billion yuan. It is reported that the base's main products will be components for electrical appliances, auto parts, construction machinery, nuclear power, military industry, locomotives, special machinery, and other industries. Huang Huihao, Executive President of Gree Electric Appliances, stated proudly that the company will uphold Gree Electric's development philosophy, gather superior resources from multiple parties, and build a world-class industrial base.
It is understood that the Gree Electric-Handan (Wu'an) Central Plains Intelligent Equipment Basic Components Industrial Base has a planned total area of 22,500 mu, a designed annual capacity of 10 million tons, and an annual output value of 100 billion yuan. Product directions include castings for Gree Electric supporting components, new energy vehicle castings, construction machinery, nuclear power, military industry, trains, home appliances, locomotives, special machinery and other industries, as well as high-end molds, intelligent robots, 3D-printed castings, and more. The first-phase core area alone will build four major projects, with total investment of 10.4 billion yuan and total capacity of 980,000 tons. It can be expected that the completion of the base will solve the current problems of Hebei's casting industry—“scattered enterprise layout, low equipment levels, high pollution emissions, and low product grades”—thereby achieving clustered and intensive development of the casting manufacturing industry.
Here, Dong Mingzhu publicly stated that Gree must overcome the “bottleneck” in upstream mechanical equipment: “If we don't have foreign equipment, we can't make good products,” and “this is sad.” She personally went to Luoyang Bearing for due diligence and visited AVIC Optoelectronics... Developing robotics and mechanical equipment businesses is an important step in Gree Electric's diversification.
The groundbreaking ceremony for the Gree Electric-Handan (Wu'an) Central Plains Intelligent Equipment Basic Components Industrial Base was held in Handan, Hebei Province. This is another major step in Gree Electric's diversified development and intelligent manufacturing—in accordance with the standards of “world-class scale and capacity, world-class equipment and technology, and world-class environmental processes,” Gree Electric will use intelligent manufacturing to help Hebei's manufacturing industry transform and upgrade, achieving green and sustainable development.
As the construction machinery industry rapidly recovers with explosive momentum, Gree Electric's move inevitably brings to mind the previous “golden decade” of the construction machinery industry, when many outside enterprises stepped into the sector. For example, automaker Chery entered the construction machinery forklift industry, and Rongsheng Group, skilled in shipbuilding, pushed into the excavator market.
However, behind the boom was chaos; at that time there were even large numbers of enterprises in the industry with immature technology and incomplete capital chains. After the rush to enter, very few enterprises actually gained profits or secured a place in the industry and could establish themselves for development.
Facing such speculation, two days after the news release, Wang Jingdong, Vice President and Board Secretary of Gree Electric, spoke out: on one hand, there is large market demand for castings, with demand from industries such as automobiles, home appliances, industrial robots, and machine tools; on the other hand, current casting plants are small and scattered with serious pollution. Gree Electric hopes to enter this field and, by promoting automated production methods, improve the lean manufacturing and green manufacturing levels of the casting industry.
Whether an enterprise succeeds depends not on how much it gains, but on how much it contributes to society. Therefore, this cross-industry move that puzzles outsiders is actually an investment based on rational thinking.