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CHINA
Winson Cai of Shanghai Sooner
popular Chinese web portal alibaba.com selling retreading equipment prior to plunging into making retreading equipment himself. Shanghai Sooner is growing at the rate of 10 per cent annually. “We are shipping on an average around 20 sets annually,” said Winson, who started the business four years ago with his savings. The company manufactures a whole range of retreading equipment like autoclaves from 4 to 24 tyres, buffers, builders, inspection machines, spreaders and is also selling tyre repair tools from Tech International. “We can supply the whole plant along with monorail system, tools, raw materials and accessories depending on the
customer budget and requirements,” informed Winson.
In order to project itself differently, the company is continuing to gain expertise and is upgrading its equipment as per international trends. “We can make and design machines as per customer specs and can add new functions as required,” claimed Winson. It is no wonder that the company’s retreading plants are now running in more than 30 countries. “We are opening eight more markets this year,” confided Winson, who travels personally to oversee the plant installation. “We hope to open the markets of Somalia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Costa Rica, Mali, Bolivia, Vietnam and Philippines,” he
said.
Shanghai Sooner is also looking at growth opportunities in the markets of Eastern Europe & Latin America. It hopes to cross last year’s sales level this year as by now it has already supplied eight plants in the first three months. Currently, it operates through an agent in Russia. When asked, if it is looking for more agents worldwide, Winson replied, “We now prefer to operate on our own as it helps us to establish a personal rapport with the client.”
Meanwhile, Shanghai Sooner is also working on a new completely automatic buffer and builder. “It will take around two years to come out with the new range,” Winson assured. The company believes that the new range would give more choices to its rising customer list. The company is making a video to showcase the right way of doing retreading as it also believes that retreaders are still not retreading properly.
The company believes that the Chinese retreading industry is going through a transition phase as authorities are closing down the smaller units that do not meet certain quality standards. “It has been known that the government is in the middle of giving shape to a policy guideline to improve the quality parameters in the retreading companies and that
would go in a long way to hike the standards in the industry,” he stated. Once the policy is implemented, the government may not renew licenses of smaller plants that retread less than 20,000 tyres annually. “Once the situation stabilises in the domestic market and standards improve, we may start looking at the domestic market for growth as well,” informed Winson.
Interestingly, Shanghai Sooner is working on changing the perception towards Chinese equipment and pricing. “People the world over believe that if it is Chinese it is cheap and of not good quality. Our equipment is not cheap and we are not making any compromises on price and quality,” Winson emphasised. To make a difference, it uses the best quality electronic parts in its equipment from the likes of Siemens and Schindler. Currently, 22 people work at the Shanghai plant.