Foreign firms express confidence in Chinese market

HANGZHOU — In the bustling intelligent production workshops operated by Italian firm Comer Industries (Jiaxing) Co Ltd, 14 production lines are running at full steam.

The intelligent workshops cover an area of more than 23,000 square meters and are located in the national-level economic and technological development zone in Pinghu, a major manufacturing hub in Zhejiang province.

The firm is engaged in the production of power transmission systems and components, and its products are mainly used in construction and farming machinery as well as wind power generation.

"The production lines started operating before the Spring Festival holiday was over in late January," said Mattia Lugli, the company's general manager. "This year, the company plans to rent its fifth factory and introduce new intelligent production lines in Pinghu."

Lugli added that: "China is our most important market. Our production scale will continue to expand this year, with the output value expected to increase by 5 percent to 10 percent year-on-year."

Nidec Read Machinery (Zhejiang) Co Ltd, a subsidiary of Japan's Nidec Group, recently launched a project in Pinghu. It is the group's latest effort to build a new energy vehicle parts industry base in the Yangtze River Delta region.

Upon completion, the project will have an annual output of 1,000 units of test-drive equipment for NEVs. The equipment will also be supplied to the flagship factory of Nidec Automotive Motor (Zhejiang) Co Ltd, another unit of Nidec Group in Pinghu.

Total investment in the flagship factory exceeds $300 million — Nidec Group's largest single overseas investment — said Wang Fuwei, general manager of the electric drive system department of Nidec Automotive Motor (Zhejiang) Co Ltd.

Nidec Group has opened 16 subsidiaries since its launch in Pinghu 24 years ago, and made three investments in 2022 alone, with its business scope covering telecommunications, home appliances, automobiles and related services.

Neo Ma, operations director at German company Stabilus (Zhejiang) Co Ltd, said that with the increasing penetration rate of NEVs in China, the Chinese market has become the main driving force for the company's profit growth.

"This cannot be achieved without China's dynamic market, sound business environment, complete supply chain system and sufficient talent pool," Ma said.

Takehiro Ebihara, director-president of Japanese company Zhejiang House Foods Co Ltd, said: "After China optimized its COVID-19 response, the offline brick-and-mortar catering industry is picking up. We are starting to build a new curry production line to further meet demand from the Chinese market."

It will be the third curry production line at the company's Zhejiang plant, and it will become an important growth engine for the company in the next few years, he said.

Pinghu's economic and technological development zone has so far attracted more than 300 foreign enterprises, mainly in the advanced equipment, intelligent manufacturing and biotechnology sectors.

In 2022, the zone recorded actual utilization of foreign investment totaling $210 million, up 7.4 percent year-on-year, among which actual utilization of foreign investment in high-tech industries accounted for 76.27 percent.

This year, the zone will continue to develop high-end foreign-invested industries and key foreign-invested projects, and cultivate advanced industrial clusters.

Xinhua