On November 15, 2011, the fifth Board Meeting held by China Forklift Company and co-sponsored by Zhejiang Xinchai Co., Ltd. was held in Xinchang Baiyun Hotel in Zhejiang Province.

More than 50 members of the Board, the related spare parts company, exhibiting companies and the media attended the meeting, including the State Construction Machinery Supervision and Test Center, China Forklift Company, Dalian Forklift, Anhui Forklift Truck Group, Zhejiang Hangcha, Xiamen XGMA, Jingjiang Forklift, Luoyang YTO, Shanghai LiuGong, Hu’nan Jinxing Forklift, Yichang Jinlun Forklift, Jinzhou Wanli, Jianghuai-Yinlian, Zhejiang Goodsense, Zhejiang Huahe, Cascade, Zhenjiang Hydraulics, Zhejiang Xinchai, Shaanxi Liaoyuan Hydraulics, Shanghai Guanxiong, Yifine Electrics, Chanjiang Runfa, Guangzhou Best Exhibition and Forklift. Chinaforklift.com (www.chinaforklift.com, English version: www.forkliftnet.com) was invited to the meeting.

The meeting was presided over by the Chairman of the Board of China Forklift Company, also the Chairman of the Board of Dalian Forklift Co., Ltd. Meng Xiangting.

On the meeting, the Chairman of the Board of Xinchai gave an opening speech and introduced briefly the information of Xinchai. As a state-level company with high-new technologies, Zhejiang Xinchai Co., Ltd. realized producing and selling 200,000 sets of diesel engines in terms of marketing sales in 2010, among which 65% were matched with the forklifts. In the first three seasons of 2011, Xinchai succeeded in producing and selling 180,000 sets of engines, and it was anticipated that the company would realize the goal of 240,000 sets in terms of engine output till the end of this year with an increasing rate of 25%. Xinchai had various product lines and excellent talent team, and the production technique of the products achieved to be the leading level in the domestic market. Xinchai had focused on enhancing the product quality and improving the service quality of Xinchai engines, in order to push forward the enterprise goal of realizing internationalization and modernization in an all round way.

The Deputy Directory of the State Construction Machinery Supervision and Test Center Li Tiesheng delivered his speech. He said that the forklift industry had entered a new stage of fast development in 2011. According to the statistics of the Industrial Truck Institute, China Construction Machinery Association (CITA), the forklift sales amount reached 240,000 sets till September of 2011, which was a considerably great performance seeing from the number, influencing a lot to the global forklift industry. While on the other hand, this impelled the manufacturing enterprises to conduct repetitive construction, and made the whole industry to pay less attention on the research and development in terms of new products and technologies. The homogeneity of the products led to the malignant competition, and it had lessened the competitive force of the products made in China, which had great impacts no the developing ability and time for the national enterprises. Under such kind of situation, Mr. Li advocated that the enterprises in the forklift industry in China had to closely cooperate with each other, conducting more detailed predications on the marketing. He said that all the member companies needed try the best to made innovations in terms of enhancing the technologies and promoting the diversified categories of the products, contributing to the continuous development of the forklift industry rather than just pushing all the pressure to Heli and Hangcha.

The General Manager of China Forklift Company Zhao Jiming made a summary to the work in the past year. He firstly showed his welcome to all the members of the Board, and then said that the Board Meeting of China Forklift Company lasting for 3o years had always been the platform for the members to communicate with each other and to discuss about the perspectives of the forklift industry in the future. The issues put forward on the meeting could be the common topics or the particular problems of the enterprises, which were discussed on other meetings recently held in the field of forklift industry for several times so that the members of the meeting were clear about the serious situation lying in the forklift industry. According to Mr. Zhao, it was anticipated that till the end of this year, there would be 250,000 sets to 260,000 sets of forklifts manufactured in China. The proportion of member companies of China Forklift Company had reduced from 80% to 60%. Although the actual sales rose nearly 23% when compared with the last year, the sequential growth had kept a reducing tendency year on year. Seen from the macro environment, the increasing rate of the construction machinery was not as large as that in the forklift industry due to the influences of the national policies, so the forklift industry had a great developing prospect.

However, Mr. Zhao also pointed out that the companies should also be clear about the situation that the market of forklift products was still legging behind, which was the reason why the influences of the national polices on the industry was less obvious and direct than the construction machinery industry. The effect of the indirect impact of the policies was shown on the year-on-year reduction of the sequential growth of the forklifts. Besides, due to the homogeneity of the products in the field of forklift industry, there were a number of construction machinery manufacturers entering forklift industry, even some auto makers. Based on the information collected from the various conferences and meetings held in the industry, it was known that the output of the forklift in China had serious surplus, which made the competition inside the whole industry was fiercer and fiercer. The enterprises held the goal of occupying more marketing shares, leading to the excessive forklift products and the inevitable fact of price chaos. The quality of the forklift products was hard to improve under such status, which also made it impossible to conduct technological innovations and progresses. At the CeMAT Hannover held in May, it had reflected the fact that there was still a large gap between the domestic and foreign forklifts. Under such a prerequisite that the situations at home and abroad were clear to the forklift manufacturers in China, Mr. Zhao encourage the the national brands for forklift to contribute more to the development of the industry, and that was also the theme of the meeting.

The General Manager of Anhui Forklift Truck Group (Heli as the forklift brand) Yang Anguo also gave a working summary to the member companies. He said that Heli had kept a stable and steady development in terms of production and operation. From January to October, the production and sales of forklifts in Heli reached 61,000 sets, increasing 29% compared with last year; while the production and sales of the parts had a year-on-year increase of 23%-35%. The overall output amount of the whole Group exceeded RMB 6 billion Yuan, increasing 25%. When reviewing the development situation of the forklift industry from January to October, there were full of a lot of uncertain factors, including the marketing situation with low economic increasing rate in the western developed countries such as America; the sovereign debt issue in Europe; the turmoil in some regions; and the asset bubble on the emerging markets; as well as the impacts from the inflation and macro control policies in domestic market on the development of the industry. All of these factors were negative, but the industrial vehicle market was also on the way of increasing. The sales amount of the first three seasons in 2011 had a relatively high increasing rate. Despite this, there existed a continuous reducing tendency in terms of sequential growth in the second half year, so the forklift manufacturing companies in China did not have a high expectation towards the market in the next year. It was predicted that the economic increasing rate would be near 9.5% in 2011, and the GDP in China would fall back 8.5% in the next year. As for the three factors that were favorable for the economic growth—investment, export and consumption, the investment and export would be highly affective to the national policies, and the consumption on the market would have the space also the tendency to increase continuously.

He also pointed out that Heli had made out the developing planning’s and specific plans for each module during the twelfth five-year plan, continuing to enhance the strength of adjusting the product structure and improve the management of capital operation based on Heli’s advantages such as the strong self-innovative capacity, relatively complete industrial chain and abundant human resource. During this process, Heli would pay more attention on the development of new energy and electric driving products. From the overall aspect, Heli would focus on the upgrade of the product layout and the increasing of market coverage. Through diversified strategic cooperation to further improve the innovative ability, Heli held the goal of realizing sustainable development based on enhancing the management level of internal economy and production. He reiterated the fact that the homogeneity of products was serious in the forklift industry, which would damage the future of the whole industry. Under such unfavorable factors, the forklift enterprises should promote their ability of developing new products and enhancing the strength of technological innovation so as to increase the attention paid on the research and development of industrial vehicles and spare parts, especially the products related to the new energies. Finally, he concluded the speech by stressing the importance of enhancing the brand construction and advocating the brand operation to make the national brands better.

The secretary of the Party Committee Wang Yiping from Zhejiang Hangcha Co., Ltd. expressed his opinion in his speech. According to him, generally speaking, the forklift industry was less influenced in the past. The current situation was that many foreign forklift manufacturing enterprises entered Chinese market, which laid much pressure on the development of domestic enterprises but cleared the status that the forklift industry in China had faced with heavy pressure in both terms of developing direction and the process as well. The development situation of the industrial vehicle industry had a large gap away from that of the foreign enterprises, which needed the domestic enterprises to invest more and try more to go further on the quality and quantity of the production. The management system of Hangcha at present decided that the company could not start the price combat with other companies, which was the operation principle of Hangcha but also the feedback for the shareholders. Mr. Wang pointed out that the aim of insisting in such principle was not only beneficial for the enterprise, but also for the future of the whole industry.
　
The superiors from the member companies of China Forklift Company also delivered the speeches on the meeting, including the General Manager of Jingjiang Forklift Co., Ltd. Lu Ming, the General Manager of Shanghai LiuGong Forklift Co., Ltd. Lan Gu, the General Manager of Hunan Jinxing Forklift Shi Guxin, the Vice Manager of YTO (Luoyang) Handling Machinery Co., Ltd. Jing Mingxu and the Vice General Manager of the Forklift Department of Xiamen XGMA Machinery Co., Ltd. Xu Quanyong, introducing the detailed information of the production and sales situation of the companies, analyzing the economic operation status, discussing the issues of adjusting the product structure and communicating their experiences on ensuring the stable development of the enterprise.

After the meeting, all the attendant representatives took a group photo, and went to visit the plant of Zhejiang Xinchai.