Business / Companies

Taizhong does heavy lifting for China's industrial sector

By Li Yang in Taiyuan (China Daily) Updated: 2014-02-25 07:29

Full speed ahead

Taizhong - the only high-speed train wheel set producer in China - built a railway equipment industrial park in 2010 to expand production to meet rising export demand.

The 60-hectare park will ultimately have three separate workshops making wheels, axles and wheel sets.

"World market demand for wheels was very strong in 2010. We acted a little late. If we had built the park two years earlier, the returns would be much higher," Wang said.

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"It wasn't an easy decision at that time, since it involved such a huge investment, given our limited net profit."

Costing 1 billion yuan, the wheel production line was the first to be finished. It began producing wheels for export in 2012.

The other two lines are still undergoing trial operations, with full operations expected to start this year, after gaining the approval of regulators.

To make steel ingots into wheels, the production line carries out several procedures: cutting, forging, heat treatment, machining and inspection.

The high-speed circular cutting saw is from Austria, and all the other equipment is imported from Germany.

With an annual designed production capacity of 300,000 units, the production line is said to be the most advanced in China.

Nick Teunissen, a sales manager for Global Railway Engineering Ltd from South Africa, came to Taizhong to inspect the quality of the wheel sets. "There's no problem with their products," he said.

Even before the new park began operations, Taizhong had several old production lines making normal wheels, axles and wheel sets.

From 2008 to 2013, the company exported 220,000 wheels and 100,000 axles for subways, freight trains, mining cars and high-speed trains.

Since 2010, Taizhong has exported 30,000 wheel sets. It's the only Chinese exporter of the product, according to Jiao Peng, international trade department head of the company's rail transit equipment business.

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