Company learns to excel in new game

Reaching Out To Foreign Markets - And A Big Deal With Disney - Has Breathed New Life Into An Award-winning Industrial Supplier

Shanghai Disneylandjust opened for business. ButShuang-liangGroupofJiangsuprovince has been excited about it for a while.

The company provided some of theair-conditioning and central heating unitsfor the theme park, at a time when a deal this big might be thought a luxury.

Based inJiangyin,Shuangliang specializes in the making ofair-conditioning units, boilers,chillers and heaters. For Shanghai Disneyland, it made and installedlithium-bromide-basedwater chiller-heater units.

Similar solutions have been provided to Beijing South Railway Station and LinateInternational Airport, Milan, Italy,saidthe previously little-known privately-owned company.

In fact,Shuanglianghassecured a place in the top 500 Chinese enterprisesandtop 100 private companies of China,andhas wonnumerousindustryawardsfor its products and services.

The Disneyland deal marked the company'stransitionalong withthat ofthe country's entire economy,said MiaoZhiqiang, president ofShuang-liangEco-energy Systems Co, one of the group's two listed arms.

In 1982,Zhiqiang'suncle MiaoShuangdafoundedthecompany. Through the1990s,itmanaged to grow intoone of thenation's largestprivate firms.Now it has grown into a conglomerate with businesses rangingfromthe making ofchillers and heaters,chemicalsandenergy saving equipment,tohotel management and financial services.

Yetbeginning with the global financial crisis in 2008 came many changes. Calling themthe new normal seems a euphemism. Many of them were seriously damaging to the company-a decline in the sales ofpolypropylene filmsand spandex, and a sluggish market forlithium-bromide water chiller-heater units, the company'smain profit center.

Worse still, the government stopped approving building new thermal power stations from last year, as part of its supply-side reformprogram. It meansShuangliang'sair-cooled condensers, mainly used in power plants,will no longer generate the expected sales.

In light of these changes, a two-pronged strategy has been adopted. The first has been todirect the company's unused capacity to foreign markets. The second has been tospend more money, and hopefully to act withgreater effect, to develop new technologies.

The company started seeking to supplyits lithium-bromide water chiller-heater unitsinthe Middle Eastthree years ago.Miao said with its extremeheat in summer, the regiongenerates a ready demand forhis company's productsand services, and can serve as a bridgeheadfor ittoexpand further to the rest of the world.

Butparachutingoneselfintoan unfamiliar marketmust be an adventure for aprivate company withoutgovernment backing.Shuang-lianglearnedabout operating in an overseas market the hard way, although Miao didn't want to go into details. He just said in the past three years"we paid for our tuition".

The most effective way, he said, is to locate a local partner to work with, as that helps deal with the localgovernmentand all the official procedures.

Yetevaluating the reliability of alocal partner proveda difficult job,"as strenuousas onecan imagine,"he said.For example,"there're manyprinces in the region, and all claim they can help,"herecalled."Wehave to make sure the ones we work with really deserve our trust."

Shuangliangnow presents itself as, not just asupplier of air-conditioning systems, but an all-round service provider capable ofdesigning, making, installing,operating and servicing such systems for its clients."It's they who asked us to be an overall contractor,"Miao said.

In developing new technologies,Shuangliangis now a leader in theapplication ofgraphene,a thin, light film ofpure carbon that is tougher thandiamond, for environmentaland otherpurposes.

Shuangliangis ashareholder of aJiangyin-based company specialized in developing thenew material, andset up anew R&D instituteto coordinategraphenestudies one year ago.

With the participation of scientists from outside the corporate system, labresearchhas already borne fruit forgraphemeuse inwater treatment and energy conservation, Miao reported, although he said it's still too early to decide how the innovation can be best put to commercial use.

"The Disneyland deal has been great, a reward for ourcontinuousefforts to build excellence in the past 30 years,"Miao said."But for the next 30 years,we will have to learn to excel in a new game."

wangzhenghua@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 07/15/2016 page28)