In the Yinchuan Economic Development Zone Strategic New Materials Processing Zone, in the production workshop of Ningxia Qiaofeng Machinery Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Qiaofeng Machinery”), the robotic arms dance accurately and the CNC machine tools operate efficiently, creating a busy scene of modern intelligent manufacturing.
This key enterprise that settled in the park in July 2020, relying on the technical foundation and localized innovation strength of Qiao Feng Intelligent Equipment Co., Ltd., has grown from a “new army” in the industry to a “dark horse” in the equipment manufacturing industry in just over five years. With an average annual output value growth rate of over 300%, it has written a “counterattack” chapter for domestic high-end CNC machine tools.
Technological innovation is the core password of enterprise development and the key to the rapid rise of Qiao Feng Machinery.
Entering the company’s exhibition hall, CNC lathes such as HQT08 series and HQT10 series are neatly arranged. Their key accuracy indicators not only meet the international standards of the machine tool industry, but some core accuracy is even better than one-third to one-fifth of the industry standard.
“In the past, machine tools relied on imports for core components such as turrets and spindles. Now we have achieved fully independent research and development, design and manufacturing, and have a number of independent intellectual property rights.” The company’s technical director said that through the “strong combination” of imported high-end brand control systems, guide rails and other components with independent core components, product performance and stability have reached the industry-leading level, and domestic machine tools have been equipped with independently controllable “Chinese cores”.
To delve deeply into the research and development of core technologies and break the monopoly of foreign technologies, Qiao Feng Machinery has established a technical team with a college degree or above accounting for more than 93%, and continues to increase investment in research and development relying on platforms such as the “Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region High-Precision CNC Lathe Manufacturing (Yinchuan) Technology Innovation Center”.
As of 2024, the company has applied for 21 intellectual property rights, covering 3 invention patents, 13 utility model patents and 5 software copyrights. The independently developed CNC lathes, turning-milling composite lathes and other products have won wide recognition in the fields of auto parts, new energy, military industry and other fields with their advantages of high precision and high efficiency.
“The dual improvement of production capacity and efficiency also witnesses the rapid development of our company.” The relevant person in charge of Qiao Feng Machinery said that in 2022, the company’s output value exceeded 200 million yuan, and in 2023 it achieved operating income of 145 million yuan and an output value of 149 million yuan. The products were exported to Russia, Iran, Turkey and other countries, creating foreign exchange of more than 30 million yuan, becoming a benchmark for domestic machine tools to “go global.”
From “outsourced assembly” to “independent research and development”, Qiao Feng Machinery’s transformation is inseparable from the “tropical rainforest” industrial ecology of Yinchuan Economic Development Zone.
Through the combination of “policy package + resource chain”, the park has built a “government, industry, academia, research and application” collaborative platform for enterprises: On the one hand, relying on the “Industrial Machinery Industry Science and Technology Innovation Alliance”, it promotes Qiao Feng Machinery and local enterprises such as shared intelligent equipment and Little Giant Machine Tools to jointly tackle key problems and improve the supporting capabilities of the industrial chain; on the other hand, through “digital factory” construction support, technology project rewards and other policies, it helps enterprises achieve the leap from R&D trial production to mass production.
In 2023, Qiaofeng Machinery was awarded the title of “Autonomous Region Specialized and New Small and Medium-sized Enterprises” and “Yinchuan City’s Top 20 Enterprises with Development Potential”, becoming a vivid epitome of Yinchuan Economic Development Zone’s cultivation of new productivity.
Facing the future, Qiao Feng Machinery has drawn up a clear development blueprint: in terms of technology, it will focus on cutting-edge fields such as multi-axis linkage compound processing and direct drive to improve the accuracy and efficiency of machine tools; in terms of products, it plans to develop customized products such as powered turret structures and double-end processing machine tools to meet high-end needs such as new energy vehicles and aerospace; in terms of market, it will deepen the collaboration of the domestic industrial chain and expand the international high-end market; in terms of talents, it will strengthen cooperation with university research institutes to build an “industry-university-research-application” talent training system.
“In the next 5 to 10 years, we plan to join the top 5% of the CNC machine tool industry by continuing to increase investment in research and development and improve the intellectual property protection system, and become a leading enterprise in the field of CNC machine tools in the region and even the country.” said the relevant person in charge of Qiao Feng Machinery.
From an output value of tens of millions to a leap of 100 million yuan, from a technological follower to a local leader, the growth trajectory of Qiao Feng Machinery is the epitome of the high-quality development of the equipment manufacturing industry in Yinchuan Economic Development Zone.
Today, 28 mainframe and supporting companies, represented by Qiaofeng Machinery, Little Giant Machine Tool, and Yigong Robot, are using the momentum of “cluster operations” to promote the output value of the industrial mainframe industry in the park to exceed 10 billion yuan, and stand up as the “industrial backbone” of the regional manufacturing industry.
“In the next step, Yinchuan Economic and Technological Development Zone will continue to focus on the high-end equipment manufacturing industry, strengthen innovation drive, optimize the industrial ecology, cultivate leading enterprises, promote the transformation of the equipment manufacturing industry to high-end, intelligent and green, inject strong industrial momentum into the ‘dual demonstration city construction’, and contribute economic and development strength to the construction of a ‘manufacturing power’.” said the person in charge of the relevant departments of Yinchuan Economic and Technological Development Zone.
