Not many Chinese factories use their own brands to promote hoists in the US. They mainly act as ODM (original design manufacturer) or OEM (original equipment manufacturer) factories and put customers’ nameplates on their products.
Wong says that US companies are shifting their sourcing from Japan or Korea to China. He says there are two reasons:
– Chinese manual hoists are cheaper and quality is improving
– There is no big improvement in the design of the manual chain hoist in the industry, except 250kg chain and lever hoists
He adds that US importers also face a problem that some of the money-minded factories sell their products to “anyone who wants to buy.” Those factories do not protect importers, he says.
According to Wong: “If we compare private enterprises with Government-owned factories, in general, private companies’ staff are more motivated and can develop more advanced manual hoists.”
During ProMat – recently held in Chicago, US – Wong recalls: “We didn’t see any Chinese hoist factories showing hoists with new designs – except Vitali.”
He says: “Manual hoists are not a high technology product. It is a labour incentive product. If we compare the top quality Chinese hoists with Japanese hoists, in terms of quality, they do not have big difference.”
He says the major difference between Japanese and top quality Chinese hoists is the quality control. In his words: “Chinese hoists may be 99.9% good and up to the requirements but 0.1% is just passable or below the requirements.”
In order to minimize the failure and ensure 100% results, “we conduct an operation test of each hoist at 1.5 times the rated capacity,” says Wong. If it is passed, he says, we will issue an inspection certificate and stamp a unique serial number on the certificate, add a nameplate and box it up.
Dennis Wong, director, China-based Vitali International Lifting Equipment Ltd Dennis Wong, director, China-based Vitali International Lifting Equipment Ltd Dennis Wong
