Shandong Yimeng Refocuses on Large and Specialty Bearings

Shandong Yimeng Bearing Co. Ltd. (YBC, Shandong Province, China) said it has refocused its business to concentrate on supplying automotive and larger bearing sizes to auto and truck manufacturers in China. From its founding in 1998 through 2002, YBC had primarily been involved in manufacturing ball bearings in the ultra-competitive small and medium sizes for automotive applications. The company is ISO9002 and QS9000 certified and markets its bearings under the YM brand. However, YBC said they found the profits at the low end of the market were not enough to warrant further investment or marketing effort. Moving into the next larger sizes of ball bearings, and adding roller bearings, was a project undertaken with the assistance of the state-run Luoyang Bearing Research Center. As YBC shifted production away from commodity small size ball bearings, sales and profits improved. High-volume sales to auto and truck manufacturers in China helped achieve volume cost savings. The company has now begun to aggressively shift even further, to large ball and roller bearings for medium and heavy trucks. In 2004, large truck sizes were almost a third of overall production. Over the coming year, YBC said it is focusing on improving productivity, throughput, and studying the possibility of financing its growth by floating an additional equity offering to lure foreign investors. Currently, YBC said its Shandong facility's production capacity stands at 10 million bearings per year. Other bearing manufacturers in China have been following the same track as YBC, moving away from commodity ball bearings and even from competitive automotive sizes, to large truck, industrial and rail bearings. Also, the companies that can afford to are gradually shifting production away from ball bearings to roller bearings, and value-added and specialty bearings.