The opening ceremony of a new factory of Qingdao Herion Drive Systems Co Ltd was held over the weekend. The new plant was co-constructed by the leading machine tool manufacturer, Tianshui Spark Group from northern China`s Gansu province and the century-old German WMH-Herion Group. It is expected to have an annual production output value of more than one billion yuan ($155 million).
Covering an area of 87,000 square meters, the plant mainly produces slewing bearings, gear rings, gear boxes and other precision transmission products that are widely applied in the field of wind energy, military heavy duty CNC machine tools, shipbuilding, medical equipment, engineering machinery, mining machinery, petroleum and metallurgy industries.
General Manager of the company Zhou Xiang said that an investment of 850 million yuan ($132 million) has been injected to the project, which will generate an annual taxation of more than 100 million yuan.
The equipment on the production line was imported from Germany. The plant was designed by a German architect and was strictly constructed according to German standard.
The Institute for Applied Research was co-founded by Herion Drive Systems, German Ingolstadt University and Qingdao University of Science and Technology, marking the formal establishment of WMH Herion`s Asia Pacific R&D Center.
The R&D center has the world`s best fully functional test rig for slewing rings. The research and development of the product was conducted by the German professional winery R&D organization at a cost of more than 2 million euros ($2.82 million), said Claude Herion, WMH Herion Group`s president.
WMH Herion`s new plant in China marks another famous century-long German brand setting up in the Greater China area, following Rothe Erde, SKF and other world-renowned foreign brands.
"The new trend provides high quality transmission products at a comparatively low price to the manufacturing market, especially the wind turbine market. As a result, domestic wind turbine manufacturers can have easy access to higher quality standards and be able to reduce their manufacturing cost at the same time," Herion added.
By Xie Chuanjiao and Dai Yan (China Daily Qingdao Bureau)