Foreign firms express confidence in Chinese market

HANGZHOU, Feb. 20 -- 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 City, a major manufacturing hub of China's Zhejiang Province.

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

"The production lines started operation 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."

"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," Lugli said.

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

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

The total investment in the flagship factory exceeds 300 million U.S. dollars -- 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 24 years after its establishment in Pinghu, and made three investments in 2022 alone, with its business scope covering telecommunications, home appliances, automobiles and services.

Neo Ma, operations director at the German company Stabilus (Zhejiang) Co., Ltd., said that with the increasing penetration rate of new energy vehicles 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.

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

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 added.

Data shows that the Pinghu economic and technological development zone has so far gathered more than 300 foreign enterprises, mainly in the advanced equipment intelligent manufacturing and biotechnology industries.

In 2022, the zone recorded the actual utilization of foreign investment totaling 210 million U.S. dollars, up 7.4 percent year on year, among which the 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.