Growth pneumatic for German company

With the spirit of being "in the region for the region", Chen said Festo has reinforced its foundation for future growth in China.

"Customers can get lower prices and then control their costs. We are working with German experts in China to help the development of the factory," said Chen.

In the training center of the factory, one German technician was tutoring some freshmen, telling them how to operate a sophisticated machine.

For the future, Chen said he expects the sales volume in China to rise by four times by 2020 compared with the current level. "We recruited eight senior managers recently," he added.

Also, when the traditional pneumatic technology market moves into a period of stable growth, Festo will pay more attention to electrical automation and process automation.

Although the electrical automation market makes up less than 10 percent of the company's revenue, it is growing at a pace of 30 to 60 percent year-on-year, while the growth rate for the pneumatic market is 15 to 20 percent.

"We are living in such a fast world. Products are updating day-by-day. In some applications, the efficiency of electricity is much higher than that of pneumatic technology. We are preparing for the future," said Chen.

Nevertheless, he is enjoying a kind of green life and not over indulging. For example, his iPhone is not the latest version, apparently.

Some of Festo's customers are suppliers of Apple Inc. It is also working with Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Lenovo Group Ltd.

Still, apart from maintaining the high-end market, the company will also march into the middle-end market to attract more customers and orders.

"As before, sales of our electromagnetic valves are very limited because of their high prices. Today, we are producing them with an automatic system, which has improved productivity. Also, we are expanding into the mass market, such as photocopiers," said Chen.

Not long ago, one customer ordered 5,000 photocopiers. This was the company's biggest order in quantity so far.

Starting from a training program in 1985 when the automation industry was almost non-existent in China, and going through a period when it only had a small logistics center in Shanghai Jinqiao Export Processing Zone, Festo China has started to take root in the marketplace.

It now employs approximately 2,000 staff, has 42 sales centers and more than 13,000 customers in China.

From time to time, he proudly pointed out that Germany is widely regarded as the leader of innovation and rigor, especially in the industrial sector.