This was not the first time that Sany Group has participated in high-stakes international operations. In August 2010, in response to the trapping of 33 miners 700 meters underground in a caved-in copper mine in San Jose, Chile, the Chilean government formulated two rescue plans. One was to use a crawler crane designed and produced by Sany Group. For this, the Sany brand gained worldwide recognition.

In 1985, four young factory workers, Liang Wengen, Tang Xiuguo, Mao Zhongwu, and Yuan Jinhua submitted their resignations at the company they worked for and set up their own welding materials factory. In 1993, this factory was renamed Sany Group and 18 years later it has grown to become a conglomerate with subsidiary interests in heavy industry, heavy machinery, automobiles and a number of other branches of industry. As for its core enterprise, Sany Heavy Industry has become the largest concrete machinery manufacturer in the world.

Sany has been part of dozens of cutting-edge international building projects, such as the Burj Khalifa in Dubai; the Imperial Towers I and II India, that country’s tallest buildings; the Shanghai World Financial Center in China; Federation Tower in Russia, China’s high-speed rail network and the Niagara Tunnel in Canada. Clients have praised Sany Group highly. In 2007, after participating in the Speyer Reinplatz project in Germany, Sany’s German partners commented, “Sany machinery is just as good as any well-known international brand.”

In May 2011, Sany’s Liang Wengen appeared as the only representative from China’s engineering machinery industry at a roundtable meeting of Chinese and American entrepreneurs during the third round of the Sino-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue held in Washington D.C. Liang pointed out in his speech that “Not all Chinese products are the shoddy low-priced items the American media make them out to be. Products made in China have been winning over the world for quite a while now.”

American Dream

From a tiny factory to the market leader in Chinese heavy industry and one of the top 50 engineering machinery manufacturers worldwide, Sany is the quintessential success story. Along the way, cracking the American market, one of the world’s biggest, was key to this success.

Back in 2005, a Sany delegation exhibited at the annual Machinery Equipment Expo in Las Vegas for the first time. They had a lot to learn. None of their products met American standards and they didn’t sell a single piece of machinery. Sany delegates packed up and went home more determined than ever to get into the U.S. market.

In September 2007, Sany signed an investment memorandum with the State of Georgia. The company decided to buy a 200-acre land in Georgia’s Peachtree City to build a development and research manufacturing center through which they could expand into the North American market. This would be the first operation set up by a Chinese machinery manufacturer in the U.S. Shortly after the global financial crisis broke out, even as markets imploded around them Sany still went ahead as scheduled with US $40 million in investments in Georgia as the first phrase of its project there.

About this bad timing, Liang maintains that he was optimistic: “It was crucial for us to get on the international stage, otherwise we would have just been another big domestic business.”

Sany was the first Chinese company in the machinery manufacture industry to build a factory in the U.S. Economically speaking, the country is not regarded as an ideal location for investment given its high labor costs. Vice President of Sany He Zhen explained to China Today why they chose the U.S. as a manufacturing base. He says that the American market is massive and well developed, and all the world’s major players including market leader Caterpillar are based there. Even when Sany only had factories in China it would be forced to buy key components and parts, such as those for heavy trucks and diesel engines, from the U.S. Now, the Sany factory in the U.S. can buy parts directly from local companies. This does away with middlemen, tariffs and other procurement costs.

There are 126 employees in Sany’s U.S. plant, 70 percent of whom are Americans. US $12.58 million has been invested in designing and developing 15 new models for the high-end North American market. The company has brought many benefits to its adopted home state of Georgia.

In March 2011, Sany attended the Las Vegas Machinery Equipment Expo for the third time. Nineteen of its 21 exhibits met American standards and were customized for American clients. Sany’s new-generation lattice-boomcrawler crane, the design team for which was headed by American expert John Lanning, was widely praised and listed on Consctruction Equipment Magazine’s top 100 products for 2011 along with another one of Sany’s products.

Liang Wengen says that by localizing products as well as human resources and management, Sany has become a truly transnational company.