At two o’clock in the morning, there were only a few incandescent lamps dimly glowing in the workshop of Zhangqiu Xianggongzhuang.
Lao Li was holding a cigarette in his mouth, walking heavily among the machine tools, his brows knitted into knots.
The order for wind turbines has dropped by another 20%, and the billing period has been delayed for a full three months. The wages of the workers have just been paid, and the balance in his bank card is barely enough to pay for the raw materials next month.
He looked up at the old machine tool he bought in 1996. The mottled rust on the machine body revealed the most glorious past of this old wind turbine factory.
That was 1996, which was a year recorded in history for the Zhangqiu fan industry.
Shandong Zhangqiu Blower Factory joined hands with Japan’s Daiko Machinery Industry Co., Ltd. to jointly establish Shandong Zhanghuang Machinery Industry Co., Ltd. – the Japanese side exported core technology, and the Chinese side opened up domestic sales and introduced the leading SSR three-blade Roots blower technology at one stroke.
Lao Li had just entered the factory at that time. He saw the Japanese experts squatting in front of the machine tools to adjust the equipment. He didn’t even know where to put his hands. He just thought, “This technology is really awesome.”
No one expected that this cooperation would directly support half of Zhangqiu Fan.
Today, Zhangqiu has long become a nationally famous “Hometown of Fans”: in the national Roots blower market, one out of every three units comes from Zhangqiu; nearly 200 fan factories and upstream and downstream supporting enterprises have been developed in the region, forming a complete industrial chain; products are exported to more than 50 countries and regions around the world, covering Southeast Asia, Europe, the Middle East, etc.
Market; Shandong Zhanggu, the leading enterprise, has been at the forefront of the industry for many years. It is not only the hidden champion of small and medium-sized enterprises in Shandong Province, but also the largest root blower manufacturer and seller in China. It was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2011 and even established a branch in the United States, becoming the first company in the domestic fan industry to establish an overseas branch.
According to the 2025 Zhangqiu District Statistical Bulletin, the local blower output reached 32,000 units. Although there was a slight decrease year-on-year, it still firmly occupied an important share in the country.
But the scenery can only be seen by others, and only you know the difficulties of Lao Li.
The worry is not that there is no work to do, but that the profit is as thin as a piece of paper, and it is still trapped by the billing period.
Involution in the domestic fan industry has been intense for a long time, and homogeneous competition is serious. In order to grab orders, manufacturers have lowered prices for each other, and profits have fallen again and again.
What is even more troublesome is the billing period, which can be as short as three months or as long as half a year. Some customers even delay payment until a year.
What’s even more fatal is that the design process is “stuck”.
Core design software has long been dependent on imports. A set of imported software can easily cost hundreds of thousands, which is undoubtedly a huge sum of money for small and medium-sized wind turbine manufacturers.
In addition, workers do not know how to operate, and digital transformation is even more difficult.
To put it bluntly, people can produce drawings with digital design in three days, but it takes half a month for you to trace the drawings manually. Even if the product quality is good, overseas customers have long been snatched away – after all, industrial fans are “industrial respiratory systems”, and efficiency is competitiveness. The 2026 industry report shows that the penetration rate of smart fans has approached 40%, and the digital gap directly determines the survival space of enterprises.
As an industry leader, Shandong Zhanggu has already sensed the crisis and took the lead in taking the step of digital transformation.
The 710 intelligent workshop they built can be regarded as an industry benchmark – the workshop integrates automated production lines, real-time data collection and manufacturing execution systems, AGV automatic guided vehicles shuttle through it, intelligent warehousing accurately schedules materials, and the large central control screen displays the operating status of each process in real time, achieving transparent management and control of the entire production process.
The effects after the transformation were immediate: the processing cycle was shortened by 50%, inventory dropped by 37%, production capacity increased by 42%, efficiency doubled, and product qualification rate also increased significantly.
Today, Shandong Zhanggu is still developing the first domestic independent simulation software dedicated to wind turbines. It wants to completely break the monopoly of imported software and firmly control the design process in its own hands.
But this is too far away for small and medium-sized factories like Lao Li – hundreds of thousands of software costs and professional technical personnel are difficult thresholds to cross.
To be honest, for most small and medium-sized factory owners, digitalization is the long-term goal, and foreign trade is the “life-saving straw” that can be grasped at the moment.
Since the joint venture began in 1996, Zhangqiu people have dealt with foreigners frequently.
Their fans can be sold to more than 50 countries around the world, not because of their fluent English, but because of their excellent quality – Shandong Zhanggu can even produce high-vacuum Roots vacuum pumps that can replace imported ones, and their performance is even better than foreign products.
At present, domestic efficiency is not good, and we are still holding on to one-third of an acre of land. To put it bluntly, we are waiting for death.
The biggest advantage of selling goods to foreigners is that they are settled in cash, the account period is short, and the profit is much higher than in China.
I know a fan owner in Zhangqiu. Last year he was still debating whether to do foreign trade. He was afraid of language barriers, being cheated, and logistics troubles. He was exactly the same as many factory owners.
This spring, he gritted his teeth and tried to place an order, sending it to Indonesia. He hired a professional freight forwarder to be responsible for logistics and customs clearance throughout the process. Although the value of the first order was not high, the payment actually arrived in his account within three days, without any sloppiness.
He told me that it felt so different: “You don’t have to chase customers every day to get money back, and you don’t have to look at other people’s faces. The money you earn is actually put into your card, and you feel at ease.”
I am not saying that all factories are suitable for going overseas, and foreign trade is not a panacea.
But Zhangqiu’s ability to grow from a small county to a national wind turbine production, sales and research base was due to its courage to enter into joint ventures, introduce companies, and expand overseas.
Now the industry has reached a critical period of transformation. Digitalization is indeed difficult, but the door to export is not closed.
The national level is also making efforts. The “Industrial Energy Efficiency Improvement Action Plan (2024-2027)” clearly promotes the high-quality development of the wind turbine industry. Although products exported to the EU need to meet higher energy efficiency thresholds, it also forces companies to improve their competitiveness and usher in new opportunities.
After all, instead of being overwhelmed by the domestic account period, it is better to try to take the first step – even if it is just a small order to test the water, it may usher in a new turning point.
Do you want to try going overseas for your factory?
How is the efficiency of your factory now?
Are you holding on to domestic trade and being overwhelmed by the debt period?
Or have you ever thought about doing foreign trade? Let’s chat in the comment section?
