Why are Wenzhou pump and valve companies not "big"?

Nowadays, walking through Oubei, which is known as "the hometown of Chinese pumps and valves", outdoor billboards of pump and valve companies can be seen everywhere. Many of the companies on the billboards appear as "group companies".

However, among these "group companies", none of them can compete with the shoe and apparel companies such as Oubei's Annunciation Bird, Aokang, and Red Dragonfly. Even, shoes and apparel companies such as Annunciation, Aokang, and Red Dragonfly may have more revenue a month than these pump and valve companies.

Similarly, Yongxing Street in Longwan District is another gathering place for valve production enterprises in our city, and the scale of valve enterprises is similar to Oubei. In the pump and valve industry that flourished in the 1980s and 1990s, why can't a group of top-notch group companies be "risked"? A reporter's investigation found that the "valve" of the pump and valve enterprises is not only due to their own factors, but also due to the lack of guidance from relevant departments.

   1

Gap: pump and valve companies are not as well-known as shoes and apparel companies

As early as the 1960s, the first valve manufactured in Wenzhou was off-line at Longwan. However, the pump and valve industry really rose in Wenzhou, similar to the clothing, shoe leather and other industries, both in the 1980s and 1990s. At that time, Longwan and Yongjia became the distribution center for pump and valve manufacturers. Yongjia Oubei, because of the concentration of pumps, shoes and clothing industries, ranks in the forefront of each market town in our city, and was once known as "Pudong" in Wenzhou.

Data from relevant departments show that there are currently more than 1,000 pump and valve companies in Yongjia and Longwan, of which more than 400 companies are in regulation. However, at present, people are familiar with the names of shoes and apparel companies such as Annunciation, Aokang and Red Dragonfly, but they cannot report the names of several pump and valve companies.

Relevant persons in the field of pumps and valves admitted that pump and valve companies are not as well-known as shoes and apparel companies, except that pump and valve products are not closely related to people's lives like shoes and clothing. More importantly, pump and valve companies are small in scale, even if they are Compared with shoes and apparel companies, the leading enterprises in the industry can only be called "little brothers".

Wu Dengkang, head of the Enterprise Development Department of the Municipal Economic and Information Commission, said that at present, there are no pump and valve companies in Yongjia and Longwan with an annual output value of more than 1 billion yuan, and only five or six pump and valve companies exceed 500 million yuan. The annual output value of some large-scale pump and valve enterprises is between two and three hundred million yuan.

A person in charge of a large pump and valve company in Oubei revealed that the current annual output value of Oubei is more than 500 million yuan, which is the two of Bethel Valve Group and Chaoda Valve Group.

Some people familiar with the matter said that the original development of the pump and valve industries in Longwan and Oubei was comparable, but after experiencing the last wave of private lending crisis, no matter the number of enterprises or the overall scale, Longwan began to lag behind Yongjia; meanwhile, the two places Some of the above-scale pump and valve companies have also become risk companies, and some have even gone bankrupt.

   2

Thinking: The effect of "grouping" is not ideal, which affects the reintegration of the enterprise

Previously, during the boom period of the pump and valve industry, there were more than 1,400 pump and valve enterprises and supporting enterprises in Yongjia and Longwan. The governments of the two places guided the pump and valve industry to become bigger and stronger, and encouraged enterprises to develop in groups, and many companies also responded. Finally, some pump and valve group companies with an annual output value of 200-300 million yuan have been formed.

A person who understands the development process of pump and valve companies has revealed that after some small and medium-sized pump and valve companies have formed groups, the new company shareholders often have large differences in business philosophy, which leads to infighting and stagnant development after the company reaches a certain scale. .

At the same time, many pump and valve companies have been conglomerating before. It is not a real integration and reorganization, but a superficial cooperation. In the last wave of private lending crisis, as long as one of the companies is at risk, the whole enterprise will be implicated. This situation is more prominent in the valve companies in Longwan.

A person from a government department in Longwan District said that the enthusiasm of local pump and valve companies to regroup has not been high, let alone the issue of deep integration, mainly because many companies are still worried about the unsatisfactory effect of the previous wave of group cooperation .

In fact, the bosses of more pump and valve companies still hold the thinking of "preferably make chicken heads rather than phoenix tails", and are reluctant to carry out deep integration with their peers. More are just loose groups, ostensibly a group company. In fact, the business is still busy.

3

Short board: many product types have affected the company to grow

Pump valve products are different from general products, and their product types, specifications and models are distinguished finely. It is understood that there are two or three thousand types and models of pump and valve products, which can be as many as thirty or forty thousand if divided according to product specifications.

Chen Wenrong, Secretary General of the Zhejiang Pump and Valve Industry Association, said that among the many valve products, the products that belong to the general valve are mainly gate valves, globe valves, check valves, etc. These varieties can be produced by each pump and valve enterprise, but each valve enterprise is still Fist products with their own characteristics.

In fact, if you look closely at the outdoor advertisements of valve companies in Oubei and Longwan, you can find that most of the products listed by each pump and valve company are only in several categories. "Enterprises of our size can produce only five or six types of valves and hundreds of varieties," said Huang Shengfeng, president of the Zhejiang Pump Valve Industry Association and chairman of Bethel Valve Group.

Because of the limited product types of individual valve companies, the output value is often not too high. Wang Hanke, chairman and general manager of Zhejiang Paiwo Automatic Control Instrument Co., Ltd., said that his company has been operating for more than 20 years, and has been mainly producing automatic control valves. Tens of millions of dollars are hovering. In recent years, various industries have adopted automation equipment, and the demand for automated control valves has increased. "I'm optimistic about the potential of automated valve control."

The reporter learned that in the entire pump and valve industry, companies with both scale and strength are mainly distributed in the field of high-end pump and valve product development and production, mostly foreign companies.

Huang Shengfeng admitted that the price of high-end products such as deep-sea valves and valves for nuclear power is several times or even dozens of times that of general-purpose valves. Once an enterprise wins this market, its scale and output value will naturally increase.

4

Limitations: Upstream enterprises are relatively backward in production capacity and technology

Enterprises producing pump and valve products need to purchase castings, forgings and general accessories from the upstream of the industrial chain first, and then produce, process and assemble into pump and valve products. Therefore, the quality of the upstream supporting industry in the industrial chain is directly related to the development of downstream pump and valve enterprises.

At present, the industrial chain of pumps and valves in our city is relatively complete. There are hundreds of upstream supporting enterprises, but the scale is not large, and the production capacity and technology are relatively backward. It is understood that in the past two years, the country has strengthened the requirements for corporate pollution control, and the upstream industry chain of the pump and valve industry, an important supporting industry-casting and forging parts production enterprises have been closed in large numbers, production capacity has dropped significantly, and prices have increased significantly.

At the same time, the quality of the castings and forgings as the "prototype" of the pump and valve products is directly related to the quality of the pump and valve products. Huang Shengfeng said that in order to make medium and high-end pump and valve products, most of the supporting enterprises in the city provide castings and forgings that do not meet the requirements. Therefore, many of their castings and forgings are purchased from Quzhou, Lishui and Anhui in the province. Jiangsu, Shandong, Hebei and other places. "Our company's casting and forging parts are purchased from outside Wenzhou and account for 50%. The cost of the company has increased a lot, but in order to ensure product quality, there is currently no better way."

Obviously, purchasing casting and forging parts from other provinces has reduced the competitiveness of Wenzhou pumps and valves in the market to a certain extent.

——CHINA · HERO VALVE