Clear views for expansion Xinyi Glass Holdings

CLEAR VIEW FOR EXPANSION

Xinyi Glass Holdings, founded in Hong Kong in 1988, has a global vision for future growth. Felicity Landon reports on the group’s Automotive Division.

VEHICLE sales in China reached 18 million in 2010 and are forecast to reach 27 million in 2013 – and by 2020, sales are expected to hit 40 million.

It’s easy to see why Xinyi Glass Automotive Division, part of a large conglomerate operating in China for nearly 25 years, has focused so strongly on its domestic market – but overseas sales are continuing to rise alongside this.

“We are lucky to live in this era,” says Shing Kan Lee, president of Xinyi Glass Automotive Division. As well as the massive increases in vehicle sales, he says: “the number of vehicles in use in China was approaching 80 million at the end of June 2011, and is expected to reach 210 million in 2020. The prospects in China for the automotive glass business, for both OEM and ARG (automotive replacement glass) markets, are certainly alluring.”

Xinyi Glass Holdings was founded in 1988. It is involved in the production of float glass, deep processing of automotive glass and construction glass, and also curtain wall design and installation. The Automotive Division has three OEM plants, located in Wuhu, Dongguan and Tianjin; each of them has been equipped with advanced production lines and equipment imported from the USA, Switzerland, Finland and Japan.

“We have aggressive plans to expand the production capacity in the Wuhu OEM plant,” says Shing Kan Lee.

Xinyi Glass serves mainly the automotive industry but also the construction and agricultural machinery industries, he says. “But our glass window products are widely used in all kinds of vehicles, also including trains and ships.”

The company’s principal market is clearly China, but it has already made some moves overseas.

“We have exported cabin window glass used for agricultural and construction machinery to Japan for many years,” he says. “And in North America, we have supplied OEM window glass products to school bus plants for many years.”

Customised services

Importantly, Xinyi not only supplies a range of more than 30,000 glass products in China, but it also offers a ‘one-stop’ supply service by providing the associated rubber sealing strips and hardware accessories at the same time. The establishment of specialised logistics bases in various regions has enabled the company to supply customised services with ‘zero distance’ to the OEM market.

The company has been included in the global supplier systems of large international names such as Ford, GE and VW.

Shing Kan Lee lists the Division’s core products as laminated windshield and tempered glass, supplied to OEMs for all kinds of vehicles.

Xinyi Glass says it is committed to achieving continuous improvement and innovations in production management, product research and development, quality control, timely delivery, after-sales service and customer satisfaction. Its Technology Development Centre, accredited as an Advanced Technology Enterprise in China, has developed numerous new products with international patent rights protection.

Among them, Solar-X is a brand new windshield product developed and patented by Xinyi Glass, which can block and reflect the infrared energy of the solar spectrum. Xinyi describes Solar-X as ‘a product series with excellent solar control performance characteristics and a great innovative breakthrough in glass technology, offering a wide range of significant practical applications’.

Clearly, Xinyi is poised for more expansion, both at home and in export markets. “If possible, we prefer acquisition to organic expansion for further growth,” says Shing Kan Lee. “After years of development in China, now we should have a global vision to craft our future growth which covers technological innovations, customers and competitors.” n