TPT July 2024

INTERVIEW

Shijiazhuang Forever Machinery Co Ltd

n What does your company specialise in and why is it the best at what it does? Forever Machinery stands among market leaders as ERW tube mill designers and manufacturers. With more than 30 years of experience and our unique expertise in roll form engineering, we deliver reliable equipment and outstanding services to reduce downtimes, boost productivity and harness new potential for our customers throughout their entire manufacturing lifecycle. We pride ourselves on our engineering skills and roll form knowledge to design high precision, high speed, ultra thin gauge, ultra-heavy gauge, high raw material grade ERW tube mills as per customers’ specific requirement and their production environment. We currently hold the largest market share for Direct Forming Technology (DFT) tube mills in terms of quantity and size we designed and commissioned for the industry on a global scale. The primary reason for our success today lies in our strong engineering team and our capability to customise and optimise our mechanical designs to maximise productivity for our customers. n What are the main projects or innovations you are working on at the moment? We have recently developed a brand-new DFT that can be utilised on compact size tube mills (up to 150 x 150 and can go as low as 40 x 40). This DFT achieves 100 per cent roll sharing across the entire mill stands and employs fully automatic size changeover function. Unlike the traditional DFT design, which only serves customers producing larger size SHS and RHS and operates at a lower speed (usually less than 35m/min), the new technology we developed incorporates innovative mechanical structural designs, which reduces the length and size of the roll shaft assembly, reinforcing the mechanical strength of the stands while reducing the stand spacings and overall footprint of the mill. n What are the future plans for your company? Do you see a lot of potential for growth in the regions and markets that you deal with or in new areas? As mentioned, we are striving to make Forever Machinery’s brand more renowned on the global stage by expanding our

presence in promising market such as Europe, America, Oceania, Southeast Asia, India and so on. Our Australian branch was established in 2019 in Sydney, dedicated to serving client in the Asia Pacific region. We are also taking an active role in international tube and pipe related associations by attending conferences and exhibitions to promote our brand and products. n What is the toughest aspect of your job? And what is the most difficult thing about being in a position of responsibility at such a large company? The most challenging aspect of my role is to continuously make the correct strategic decision for the company, which involves public relation management, setting up paths/products for R&D and making plans for business development. As a second-generation owner, my father’s success is not only pressure, but also a driving force for me to work hard to maintain and improve our standing. n What’s the most exciting or challenging project or challenge you have been involved in during your career so far? The most exciting and at the same time challenging period was through late 2020 to the first half of 2021. You might have noticed that this is within the period where Covid was ravaging the whole world. However, we experienced a surge of order from our domestic market. We had a turnover record of $40mn for the year of 2020 and this record still holds till now. The reason why I said it was both exciting and challenging is because we weren’t prepared at all for the sudden influx of orders and surge in workload. Pretty much all the orders we received within the period came with a very tight delivery timeframe. We were under tremendous pressure to meet the tight schedule and had to deal with shortage of manpower and limited space to carry out production at the same time. I remember all of our staff from R&D, production to our services team did a lot of extra work and overtime.

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JULY 2024