Enterprises from diverse industries make city their base for growth at home and abroad

Big Dutchman employees operate poultry farming equipment at the company's factory in Tianjin in May. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

TIANJIN — Activity is in full swing at a 12,000-square-meter manufacturing factory of German company Big Dutchman in North China's Tianjin municipality.

Poultry farming equipment rolls off automated production lines, with a few workers operating the intelligent system. Neatly stacked products on the shelves by the wall will soon be delivered to customers across China.

China is a pillar market for the company’s business growth. We still have great development potential in China in the future.

Walter Benz, president of Big Dutchman China

Established in 1938, Big Dutchman is one of the world's largest suppliers of feeding systems and housing equipment for modern pig and poultry production.

As the company's only factory and logistics center in China, the Tianjin base, founded in 1997, has businesses involving marketing, production, services, procurement and logistics.

"China is a pillar market for the company's business growth. We still have great development potential in China in the future," said Walter Benz, president of Big Dutchman China.

After 30 years of development, Big Dutchman's business in China is on the up, with an annual output value of around 1 billion yuan ($138 million), contributing one-eighth of the company's total global output.

Currently, its customers and suppliers are all over China, and sales branches have been set up in many Chinese cities, such as Guangzhou in Guangdong province and Chengdu in Sichuan province.

To meet the trend of China's intelligent manufacturing development and better help Chinese customers manage their farms, Big Dutchman has made large investments in digitalized breeding systems and equipment to enhance its products' competitiveness in the country.

Visitors gather at the booth of German chemical giant BASF during an expo in Shanghai in June. (FAN JIANLEI / FOR CHINA DAILY)

In the near future, the company plans to build its first insect farm in China to provide organic feed for poultry breeding and extend the industry chain, and it has also decided to design a new automated breeding greenhouse to enrich its product portfolio.

Like Big Dutchman, many German companies, including Flender, ZF Friedrichshafen AG and Leybold, have cooperated well with Tianjin for many years.

According to statistics from the city's municipal bureau of commerce, as of May 2023, Tianjin had 471 German-invested enterprises in the fields of equipment, automobile and electrical and mechanical manufacturing.

The cumulative contracted foreign investment of these companies had reached nearly $5.7 billion, and the accumulated actual utilized foreign investment had exceeded $4 billion.

China has been Germany's most important trading partner for seven years in a row. German corporations invested a record 11.5 billion euros ($12.5 billion) in China in 2022, according to a German Economic Institute report released in March.

Recently, Siemens announced a plan to increase investments in the country, including an additional 1.1 billion yuan in fixed-asset investment for its industrial automation products smart manufacturing base in Southwest China's Chengdu in Sichuan province.

German chemical giant BASF continues to see China as a future growth market and is willing to strengthen its business in the nation to continue its momentum of development.

According to data from the German Institute for Economic Research, direct investment by Germany in China is on the rise. A survey published by the German Chamber of Commerce in China in June said that about 55 percent of responding German companies plan to increase investment in the country in the coming two years.

"To achieve long-term development in China, we plan to establish a second production base and logistics center in South China to meet the increasingly developing Chinese market," said Benz.

In the next five years, the company is looking forward to increasing its output value in China to 1.5 billion yuan and will continue to share the growth potential of the Chinese market, Benz added.