Visiting Zoomlion, the world's largest tower crane factory: Overseas markets have become a new growth engine, accounting for 6/10

Here, a tower crane can be rolled off the production line every 18 minutes on average." Recently, reporters visited Zoomlion (000157)'s intelligent tower crane factory, an on-site tour of the world's largest and most intelligent tower crane production base. Stepping into the welding workshop, dozens of aurora-green mechanical arms are precisely performing welding operations.

The twin-wire welding technology enables weld precision to reach the millimeter level, with each welding machine valued at over 2 million yuan. Liu Xin, Director of Quality and Process at Zoomlion Construction Hoisting Machinery Company (hereinafter referred to as "Zoomlion Construction"), introduced to The Paper that the factory has achieved full-process intelligent manufacturing from material cutting, structure, painting to assembly and debugging. The collaborative operation of 46 intelligent production lines, 3 intelligent vertical warehouses, and a 60,000-square-meter outdoor debugging area has increased production efficiency by 33percent while reducing labor costs by 60 percent. As an important equipment for construction projects, the development history of tower cranes has witnessed the rise of made-in-China. In 1956, the predecessor of Zoomlion 

- the former Changsha Construction Machinery Research Institute of the Ministry of Construction developed China's first tower crane with independent intellectual property rights. Today, Zoomlion's tower crane sales have remained the world's No.1 for many consecutive years. What's more noteworthy is that overseas markets are becoming a new growth engine. According to Yu Lihu, Deputy General Manager of Zoomlion Construction, currently, the overseas market share of Zoomlion's tower cranes is about 60 percent, and the growth rate of overseas sales exceeds that of the domestic market. "The gross profit margin of the overseas tower crane market is much higher than that of the domestic market. The company is breaking through into high-end markets in Europe and America and plans to double its overseas market growth." Overall, the construction machinery industry has been continuously advancing its internationalization process in recent years. Up to now, China's construction machinery products have spread across the world, among which the countries and regions along the Belt and Road Initiative are the most important overseas direction for Chinese construction machinery enterprises, accounting for nearly 50percent of all exports. "We will focus on exploring emerging overseas markets such as the Middle East and Africa, such as providing customized solutions for international projects like Saudi Arabia's 'Vision 2030', while expanding the application of tower cranes from real estate to new fields such as wind power, nuclear power, and hydropower." Yu Lihu said that currently, Zoomlion's tower cranes have been exported to more than 100 countries and regions around the world, including Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, and Singapore. In addition, in terms of technological innovation, Zoomlion Construction will continue to promote the development of tower cranes towards intelligence and unmanned/less-manned operations. "Safety is the lifeline of the tower crane industry," emphasized Yu Lihu. He noted that tower crane safety cannot be ensured by a single enterprise or link alone. It is a systematic project that runs through the entire lifecycle of manufacturing, installation, use, inspection, and scrapping. Only when all participants in the entire chain perform their respective duties and work collaboratively can the safety防线 (safety line) be jointly strengthened. According to his introduction, in the manufacturing stage, Zoomlion uses high-quality traceable materials, conducts phased array flaw detection on key and important welds, and verifies product reliability through six major test platforms. In addition, the company has established a "157" service system, including guarantee measures such as 15-minute response and 2-hour arrival, to ensure the safe operation of equipment. This series of technological innovations and safety guarantees is helping Zoomlion participate in major national engineering projects. Recently, the hydropower project in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River, with a total investment of 1.2 trillion yuan, officially started construction. The extreme environment of high altitude and cold climate poses strict requirements on construction machinery . Yu Lihu stated that the project has provided an opportunity for the company's uniquely developed large-scale concrete tower belt conveyor specially designed for dam construction to be demonstrated and applied, and the project will significantly boost the demand for domestic construction machinery. Zoomlion has established a special working group to continuously follow up on the Yarlung Zangbo River downstream hydropower project. According to calculations by Soochow Securities, the project's earthwork volume exceeds 500 million cubic meters, and the demand for construction machinery covers large excavators, loaders, mining trucks, concrete machinery, road machinery, etc. The project is located in Linzhi City, Tibet, with an average altitude of 3,000 meters. In the cold environment, diesel has poor combustion performance and high maintenance costs, so electrified, unmanned, and low-manpower construction machinery is expected to become the mainstream choice.