Taixing – a county-level city administered by Taizhou, East China's Jiangsu province – had a great start to the first quarter of the year, witnessing strong foreign trade through its efforts in marketing, brand development, policy implementation, transformation and upgrades, among other areas.
As a result, in Q1 Taixing generated total imports and exports valued at $1.61 billion, up 28.9 percent year-on-year.
One of its star businesses was GEM (Jiangsu) Cobalt Industry Co Ltd, whose cobalt tetroxide production line was recently operating at full capacity.
Cobalt tetroxide is the main raw material for preparing lithium cobalt oxide as the positive electrode material for lithium-ion batteries.
With the rapid development of new energy vehicles, the company's products are now in hot demand. In Q1, the group's import and export sales hit nearly $100 million, a year-on-year increase of nearly 35 percent.
This year, Taixing city has implemented its "one enterprise, one policy" and "on-site assistance" mechanism for the top 20 resident foreign trade enterprises to support their further development.
In particular, the oil chemicals plant of Apical Oleochemical (Taixing) Co Ltd – costing $460 million – is a major venture in there, projected to produce 1.08 million tons of oil and fat series products annually.
Because raw materials of palm stearin and fatty acids are imported from abroad, the Taixing bureau of commerce has recently opened the Jinyan storage liquid chemicals wharf to enable the direct delivery of the goods.
A tanker offloads at the Jinyan storage liquid chemicals wharf. [Photo/WeChat account: txfabu]