Polish state-owned oil company, Plock combined with the circular power station project is responsible by Siemens AG of Germany on the general contracting and cooling tower equipment procurement. Among the thousands of equipment in power plant project, Seagull cooling tower is the only ‘Made in China’. In last November, the installation and commissioning of the power plant cooling tower was completed and it is well received by our foreign clients abroad.

In the exhibition hall of Jiangsu Seagull Cooling Tower Co., Ltd. (referred as Seagull), PetroChina, Sinopec, CNOOC are the partners of Seagull and its high-end international friends such as Siemens, Exxon Mobil, Bayer, Linde, Marubeni and Mitsubishi Chemical. Seagull’s products have exported to more than 30 countries and regions which mostly are top 500 companies in the world.

Seagull founded in 1997, a company specializing in R&D and manufacturing of cooling towers. According to the statistics of the Cooling Equipment Branch of China General Machinery Industry Association, Seagull’s production and sales volume have been ranked as first among the domestic manufacturers of ventilation and cooling towers since 2012. In last January, Seagull was awarded by Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as the first batch of manufacturing champions.

How did Seagull climb to the peak step by step? Through the hard work for more than 20 years, Seagull has become the domestic industry champion. The two mostly important key points for Seagull to step to Global are Innovation and ‘Going Out’. Wu Zhuping, vice chairman and general manager Seagull said.

‘First, is to continue innovate and seize the market. Frankly speaking, the development and manufacturing of cooling tower is a sub-sector, if Seagull is not deeply involved in this field and continue innovate, it may be eliminated by the market.’ Wu Zhuping said.

Innovation is the driving force behind the development of Seagull. Wu Zhuping is one of the experts on cooling tower research. When Seagull was founded, it established a support point for R&D as a product. Seagull Co., Ltd. currently has a super-large energy-efficient cooling tower engineering technology center in Jiangsu Province, with multiple Technical talents.

What effect does innovation have? For example, Wu Zhuping said that the cooling tower will bring a lot of water evaporation during the cooling and heat exchange cooling process. Therefore, for the cooling tower, the water consumption is one of the important indicators to measure the quality of the product. In order to improve the water saving rate of the cooling tower, the seagull conducted in-depth research and successfully replaced the foreign products with the JXY type water-saving cooling tower in the Shenhua Ning coal project.

“Shenhua Ningmei Project is the largest coal-to-liquid project in the world with a single set of equipment. One of the key requirements is to save water. The Shenhua Ningmei Phase I project selected a cooling tower from a US company, and in the second phase, the seagull cooled. The tower successfully replaced foreign products with a water saving rate of 19%.” Talking about the water saving rate of the seagull cooling tower, Wu Zhuping is full of pride. After the completion of the Shenhua Ningmei Phase II project, the water saving capacity of the Seagull Cooling Tower is expected to reach 1.642 million tons a year.

According to the Yellow River's annual average flow rate of 1000 cubic meters per second, it is equivalent to 27 minutes of runoff in the Yellow River.

The seagull succeeded in the Shenhua Ning coal project, but the seagull did not stop. What’s more, it developed more types of cooling towers around water saving, from a type A cooling tower with a water saving rate of 19% to a water saving rate of 50% D-type cooling tower. At present, the cooling tower water saving index level developed by Seagull is at the forefront of the global cooling tower industry.

Through continuous innovation, Seagull stood at the forefront of the domestic market. On this basis, the Seagull people began to plan to “go out” and actively “hug” new opportunities.

In 2013, China proposed the “One Belt, One Road”. The Seagull people responded positively and quickly deployed. In the same year, the first subsidiary in Malaysia, Seagull Asia Pacific, was established, and the first step into the international market was taken. Since then, Seagull Holdings Taiwan Taihao Company, participating in Malaysian TCT Company, and establishing Seagull Asia Pacific Thailand Branch are currently in the process of establishing Indonesian subsidiaries and US subsidiaries.

In 2015, Seagull signed the Malaysian National Petroleum Project, followed by the national policy, and successively signed a series of representative projects. In 2015, Germany Siemens signed a contract to build the BeniSuef power station project in Egypt, which is one of the largest gas-fired power stations in the world. It needs to be equipped with a cooling tower during construction. Siemens is bidding externally, and the seagull cooling tower is pressing the global peers to be selected! “We provide 64 FRP cooling towers for the Egyptian power station with a contract value of more than 8 million Euros.” Wu Zhuping proudly stated that the success of the Egyptian project marks the company's technical competence, product quality and project execution capability recognized by Siemens. The company has laid a solid foundation for entering the global electricity market.

Although the cooling tower is not big, the global market is very broad, and it can also have a “big job” in deep farming. Wu Zhuping said, “To make seagull a company with international competitiveness” is our future goal.

In the process of globalization, Seagull will improve the management level of its employees and the quality of its employees. By pushing products out, it will bring Chinese brands to the international market and make “China Sea Gull” a “global seagull”. Xu Haiyan

[Expert Comments] The success of the seagull lies in firmly grasping the two key elements of independent innovation and globalization. The two complement each other and promote each other.

Continuous independent innovation has given the seagulls the courage and confidence to go out; the globalization process has allowed the seagulls to find a huge market, cooperate with the world's top 500 companies, and build a vast world top "Circle of friends".

For many years, Seagull focused on cooling tower development. This segment has continued to grow and become a well-known company with international influence in the industry. Although cooling towers are “small areas”, they can also make “big articles” by participating in global competition. Specialized focus and global vision are to cultivate the industry's "single champion". The two outstanding qualities that are indispensable are important magic weapons to promote the Chinese national brand in the world.

Wang Shuhua (Deputy Director and Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Social Policy, Provincial Academy of Social Sciences)