Hebei’s Anping weaves a vigorous future

Anping, which literally means peace and flatness in Chinese, is a county of Hebei province. It was named after local people’s peaceful life and its flat terrain.

Anping has a long history of manufacturing wire net. Hundreds of years ago, it processed silk products; in modern times, local people manufactured wire mesh. It has gained fame worldwide from individual workshop in almost every household to an industry thanks to the e-business.

Putting the sifter mesh on the sifter is called horse tail hair web for sieves, which is used for sieving grain. 

From horse tail hair web for sieves to wire net, Anping has gradually formed a complete industrial chain integrated with wire drawing, knitmesh, filter products making and loom manufacturing. It has 13,700 wire net producers, selling products to more than 190 countries and regions and made itself “Capital of Chinese wire net”. In 2019, the industry achieved main business income 51.8 billion yuan($7.63 billion), among which the output, sales volume and export volume of weaved wire net were respectively accounting for 80 percent of the country’s total. 

However, at the very beginning, Anping’s products were labeled as “numerous of low-end products but few of high-end ones”. 

“Only by speeding up upgrading the industry and technology, the industry can embark on a track to a high-quality development,” said Ma Zhanying, director of the county’s Industry and Information Technology Bureau. Anping drafted plans to revitalize the wire net industry and expand chain extension in order to promote industrial upgrading. 

In 2005, Hebei Lianda Filter Equipment Co Ltd introduced new sintering technology and optimized the producing process, which not only broke foreign monopoly, but also helped realize domestication of high-end filter elements. 

Lianda improved its product competitiveness by depending on technological innovation. It grew into a high-tech enterprise from a business, which is an epitome of Anping’s product upgrading. Anping focuses on the integration and combination of the industry to boost its transformation and upgrading.

Scattering layout and loset up a highland forw industrial concentration were used to be main bottlenecks for Anping’s wire net development. In order to optimize industry layout, Anping built 13 industrial parks for filter equipment and materials and surface processing of wire net; it constructed high-tech industry development zone, attracting technological innovation enterprises to settle down; it boosted modern logistics and developed a highland that gathers high-end products and leads industry transformation and upgrading. 

“The company used to only have four workshops, which limited the production capacity,” Chen Congshang, deputy general manager of Hehuang Paper Machine Clothing, said that after moving to a high-tech zone in 2015 the company enlarged its size more than 30 times.

“By using government subsidies, we purchased nine advanced netting machines, making the company’s annual production capacity above 600,000 square meters with estimated annual sales income achieving more than 100 million yuan.” He said. 

At present, more than 30 percent of the wire net enterprises’ equipment in Anping are intelligent, with over 50 percent equipment reaching international advanced level. Since 2019, its enterprises have participated in formulated 24 national and local industry standards and have applied 287 patents.

Merchants from all over the world gather in Anping every autumn. China Anping International Wire Net Expo is the world’s only professional fair in the industry. It has been held 19 sessions since 2001, totally attracting 658,000 business people and achieving transaction volume of 28.4 billion yuan. Anping is known around the world for its wire net industry.