At Biel Crystal Manufactory’s Huizhou plant in Guangdong
province, two robotic arms work round the clock, uploading and offloading the
smartphones modules.They are part of the automation process that
the world’s largest producer of cover glass has adopted to deliver 4 million
pieces of products a day.Less than 100 kilometres away in the adjacent city of
Dongguan, TAL Group, one of the world’s largest dress shirt makers, has also
automated its production process and capitalised on technology for product
innovation.
The two are among numerous Hong Kong manufacturing pioneers that have embraced
the digitalisation of manufacturing and brought the “smart factory” created
under the so-called Industry 4.0 into their businesses to better compete
globally.More importantly, their successful transformation gives the
manufacturing sector, once a crucial growth driver of the city’s economy and
production base to many overseas brands, a new lease of life. In so doing, the
transformation mitigates the pressures of labour shortage and rising wages.
The value of Hong Kong’s value-added manufacturing halved from US$7.9 billion
in 2000 to US$3.5 billion in 2015 to account for a mere 1.2 per cent of gross
domestic product (GDP), according to the most recent World Bank data .In
contrast, value-added manufacturing in China surged nearly eightfold from
US$384.9 billion in 2000 to US$2.9 trillion in 2013, according to the most
recently available data.Forty
per cent of our manufacturing activities are automated,” said Biel’s chairman
Yeung Kin-man, whose company produces glass cover used in two of every three of
Apple’s iPhones sold in the world.Biel is also the supplier of glass screens
for Samsung’s smartphones, and for devices made by Huawei Technologies, Oppo
and Vivo.
It is the screen maker for Yota Phone, a Russian smartphone that boasts the
world’s first dual-screen model. The phone was presented as a gift by Russian
President Vladimir Putin to Chinese President Xi Jinping during their 2014
meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Beijing.We have
been investing in research and development over the past decade,” said Yeung.
The company invested 800 million yuan (US$ 120 million) in research and
development as of 2016.With a double-digit gross profit margin, the company
raked in a total revenue of 36 billion yuan last year. His increase in wealth
prompted Yeung to pay HK$2.8 billion in January for a mansion on The Peak in
Hong Kong.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Yeung is the only manufacturer included among
Hong Kong’s 10 richest people, with an estimated wealth of US$8.3 billion,
according to Forbes’ 2017 annual list of individuals and families
that control the most wealth in the city. Other tycoons in the list earn their
wealth from property, hotels and casinos.The company is now planning a Hong Kong
listing to raise HK$10 billion for future expansion such as producing optical
glass under its own brand.
“We
are lucky as we have entered a booming industry. It’s not only my company, but
also other companies like AAC Technologies and Foxconn, the world’s largest
contract manufacturer for electronics, that have seen a big jump in their
business scale, riding on the growth of the smart mobile devices.“If we were in
the traditional garment and textile industry, we would not have seen such
business growth,” said Yeung. “It’s not a sunset industry,” said Roger Lee,
chief executive of TAL, the garment and textile manufacturer that produces one
of every six dress shirts sold in the US.
Source: The Wall Street Journal Monday, 14 August 2017