Breaker Technology continues to advance in Chinese market
‘Taking the show on the road’ for most Canadian equipment manufacturers usually means displaying their products at a local conference and annual trade show or somewhere in the United States every two or four years at much larger venues.
In either case, the logistics behind getting a full-size piece of mining equipment, or even smaller components to a product show for that matter, are more detailed than most people understand or appreciate.
In fact, months, and sometimes years of preparation go into arranging for a product to be displayed at a trade show. Aside from selecting the right product, there’s also the initial cost of booking the display space, there’s the task of designing that space to show off the product’s best features and first and foremost, there are the details behind helping ensure that the product arrives on time and intact.
As every exhibitor will agree, there’s nothing more embarrassing than receiving a broken product, or no product at all, when participating in a trade show, especially one that is in a foreign land, thousands of miles away from head office.
Product shows and conferences held in foreign lands are a challenge and can be disastrous, both financially and from a reputation’s point of view, but for companies like Breaker Technology of Thornbury, Ontario, they’re an important part of doing business; ; a part that has been in its business plan for almost a quarter of a century.
Long before offshore trade shows and foreign missions became popular and accepted by many countries, Breaker Technology, an Astec Industries Company, has been attending shows around the world and was, in fact, one of the first North American companies to exhibit its products in China.
Claude St. Jean, BTI’s Director of Sales for China and Europe, has been travelling to China since 1998 and has been responsible for helping establish one of the first North American equipment dealership networks in the country.
St. Jean opened an office in Beijing in 2002 to promote and support BTI’s interests in China. He lived there for five years.
“Gaining trust and acceptance was difficult at first because back then, the Chinese were very cautious of foreigners entering their country and even more skeptical of the products we were trying to sell them,” says St. Jean.
Breaker Technology was founded in 1958 and since its inception; it has provided products and services to the mining, construction, demolition and aggregate industries.
Understandably, BTI’s various lines of mining and other rock-breaking tools were of interest to the Chinese but as already mentioned, they were skeptical (yet curious) about how these North American-built tools could help their nation move forward and into a modern world of technology.
Similar to all relations with the Chinese in the later part of the 20th Century, a great deal of time was spent by BTI with government officials who wanted to know everything there was about the products entering their country.
“Chinese have an appetite for high technology and on many occasions we replace locally built machinery in favour of our superior quality and technically advanced machines,” says St. Jean.
“Some earlier products were purchased for the sole purpose of the Chinese carefully examining, almost dissecting them, to learn how they were built and to determine whether they could be built domestically without importing them from the West.
“Fortunately, China didn’t have neither the industrial technology nor materials at the time to copy and produce tools and equipment to withstand the rigors of mining equal to what we were making.”
As mentioned earlier, BTI has spent more than 25 years in China and today, the company is proud of its presence in the country and in particular, its long-standing relationship with its dealer network Airfeng Inc of Beijing.
Since entering the country in 1996 with its TM Series of mobile rockbreakers, BTI has now become the Number One provider of these machines with more than 100 in operation throughout the country.
St. Jean credits the company’s success to good products and a clear understanding of what Chinese customers expect in terms of technology and respect for their culture and expectations.
“One customer needed machines that could be operated from surface 5km from the rockbreaker. We delivered on this and allowed for a single employee to monitor and operate multiple grizzly stations from his office desk on surface, said St. Jean.
“This was later attempted by a local manufacturer but there units were later replaced by ours. A new order for two more was received recently at the China Mining Congress held in Tianjin. This customer will have 13 of our systems once these units are received early in 2015.
“That,” says St. Jean, “is further proof of the relationship BTI has with its customers in China and in their faith in our equipment.
“And there’s good reason for that faith. The original TM series mobile rockbreaker sold in 1993 was retired last year with over 40,000 hrs on it. The second unit sold is still operating with the same customer with over 39,000 hrs on it. That’s pretty impressive!”
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