Today's visits took us out of Bejiing and into the sister city called Tianjin, which was about 3 hours away. We first visited the John Deere plant in Tianjin. John Deere first came to China 40 years ago with a partnership with a Chinese company. In 2012 they separated and John Deere became an independent company in this country. Currently, they have 4 plants throughout China. The plant we visited runs 4 lines of tractors and are hoping to add a 5th. They employ about 200 workers that work just one shift, except the painters will work a second shift during the busy season. The plant has the capacity to make 40 tractors a day, but is doing much less. According to our guide, 95% of what they produce in the China plants stay in China. What I thought was cool was that last year 500 cotton pockets were brought over from the Des Moines Works plant, which is where my dad works. There you go Wade, your hands touched the same tractors as a Chinese cotton farmer! The tractors they build in China are much smaller than what we are used to in the US because the fields are much smaller. Other than that, they looked about the same and the assembly process looked the same.
Our second stop was to Artex/East Rock manufacturing. They make equipment for dairy farms such as stalls, lock gates, big fans, and calf housing. The company is a joint partnership between Artex which is a Canadian based company and East Rock which is a Chinese based company. We weren't there for very long, but we did get to see their new robot welding machine that cost them 1,000,000 RMB (almost $200,000).
After Artex, we had a traditional Chinese dinner with Dr. Mike Lemmon with Whiteshire Hamroc. He is a veterinarian by education, however he has been coming to China since the early 1990s to try to introduce US production practices to their producers. It was very interesting to here all his stories of struggles and success he has had over a course of almost 30 years. He is a very experienced man who wasn't going to sugar coat his stories to us, which was very respectable. We got his view on the potential and opportunities for the US industry in China besides exports. The conversation lasted for over 2 hours and by the end we all agreed he was one of our favorite speakers of the trip.
We ended the night bonding at the local Irish Pub.
Our second stop was to Artex/East Rock manufacturing. They make equipment for dairy farms such as stalls, lock gates, big fans, and calf housing. The company is a joint partnership between Artex which is a Canadian based company and East Rock which is a Chinese based company. We weren't there for very long, but we did get to see their new robot welding machine that cost them 1,000,000 RMB (almost $200,000).
After Artex, we had a traditional Chinese dinner with Dr. Mike Lemmon with Whiteshire Hamroc. He is a veterinarian by education, however he has been coming to China since the early 1990s to try to introduce US production practices to their producers. It was very interesting to here all his stories of struggles and success he has had over a course of almost 30 years. He is a very experienced man who wasn't going to sugar coat his stories to us, which was very respectable. We got his view on the potential and opportunities for the US industry in China besides exports. The conversation lasted for over 2 hours and by the end we all agreed he was one of our favorite speakers of the trip.
We ended the night bonding at the local Irish Pub.