Since 1992 when the first overseas order was signed at the Canton Fair, CHINT Global has been exploring globalization over the past 20 years, overcoming numerous obstacles and writing countless moving stories.
And here we’re going to share the CHINT’s story that happened in Latin America.
Since 1998, CHINT has entered Brazil market. At the beginning, the customers refused to accept CHINT’s products. Now they actively promote CHINT products, which touched us a lot.
In the territory explored and served by CHINT people in global markets, there is a mysterious and distant place-Latin America. Brazil, as one of the five BRIC countries, is the largest national market in Latin America.
For 23 years, CHINT Brazil team has combined the characteristics of the market and customers as a way to deepen the localized development strategy, and to implement the simple concept of “customer-oriented”.
From Refusing to Opening the Door to Cooperation
In the 1990s, as China’s economy took off, China-Brazil economic and trade cooperation became increasingly close. In 1998, CHINT started to deploy in Brazil, opening the “road of pioneering”.
At that time, European and American brands had been cultivating locally for many years, while CHINT was in the initial stage of globalization. A big gap stands between us and the global electric giants. In addition, Brazil’s high exchange rate fluctuations and high trade barriers had a negative impact on the business and the market, while the NBR standard has also increased the market threshold.
Jackie Xiang, general manager of CHINT Latin America, recalled that even so, CHINT has achieved cooperation with head-level customers such as STEMAC, Brazil’s largest generator set manufacturer and leading company STECK through unremitting efforts.
“The person in charge of STEMAC’s procurement once said: When CHINT came to us for the first time more than 20 years ago, I didn’t recognize Chinese brands, and I didn’t think about using Chinese products in the past. But now I not only want to use your products, but I am also willing to recommend CHINT to more friends.”
In Brazil, such head customers have never lacked suppliers. At that time, in order to win cooperation opportunities with STEMAC, CHINT staff regularly visited and communicated with customers in depth about existing problems, and kept getting closer, turning from strangers to friends. In this way, after three years of hard work, CHINT has finally opened the “door of cooperation” with STEMAC.
This story is a microcosm of the Brazilian team’s perseverance and realized cooperation with head customers step-by-step.
The successful development of multiple big customers has laid a solid foundation for the future development of “localization”. In 2010, the first subsidiary in Latin America, the CHINT Brazil, was formally established, starting to transform from a trading company to a localized company. Since then, CHINT has continued to make breakthroughs in the Brazilian market and has established stable cooperation with industry leaders such as TRAMONTINA and Siemens.
In 2019, Brazil, as an overseas monomer market, achieved a new breakthrough in sales, which became one of the milestone events of CHINT Global.
Based on whole electric power chain and high-reliable products, CHINT Global has been on the way to grow with customers. Since 2020, affected by the epidemic, Brazil’s economy and people’s livelihood have been greatly impacted. Adhering to the customer-centric concept, CHINT has always stood with customers, and provided support as much as possible, staying in the same boat as clients.
From "What Does CHINT Have" to" What Customers Need"
“Before we shared with our customers more about what CHINT has,” said Shan Hao, the country manager of CHINT Brazil, “but with the deepening of the market, now we focus more on what customers really need, so we will combine customer’s development plan, existing problems and provide suitable product solutions, and reach a win-win with valuable output.”
He gave an example. TSEA is one of Brazil’s largest transformer manufacturers and one of the EPC companies that are active in the Brazilian power transmission and distribution market. Focusing on TSEA’s positioning and development plans in the Brazilian market, CHINT took the initiatives to dig into customer needs. To solve the shortcomings of TSEA’s single transformer product in EPC bidding in transmission and distribution projects, CHINT implements strategic cooperation with TSEA in GIS/HGIS, which also strengthened CHINT’s influence in the Brazilian market by forming a CHINT/TSEA consortium.
In addition to in-depth understanding of customers, CHINT’s years of accumulation and comprehensive advantages in management mechanisms, the entire industry chain, manufacturing capabilities, and channel networks have become the key to improving service capabilities and gaining brand recognition.
“As a private enterprise, CHINT has flexible mechanisms, high market sensitivity, and fast response. It can adopt different cooperation strategies for corresponding customers and provide solutions in the short time.” Jackie Xiang said. For example, during the cooperation with Brazil’s well-known local brand company TRAMONTINA, CHINT specially set up a professional team with both Chinese and Brazilian employees to respond to customer feedback within 24 hours and resolve it in time.
From power equipment, solution integration, to EPC, financing and more than 20 years’ experience of deep cultivation in the Brazilian market, CHINT has the resources needed in all aspects to operate well in actual projects and solve existing problems.
“Brazil has a vast territory and large cultural differences. Each state has different resources and different types of business. The sales network and the ‘localized’ operation team covering the whole country of Brazil will help CHINT to further understand the accurate needs of customers and better provide services to customers.” Jackie Xiang said.
From channels, teams to local operations, CHINT Brazil has always clearly implemented the “localization” strategy.
Brazilian Customers are our Families
CHINT’s local business covers low-voltage, power transmission and distribution equipment, photovoltaic new energy and other fields. As the first batch of Chinese private enterprises entering Brazil, CHINT continues to use practical actions to help Brazil develop and consolidate friendly cooperative relations.
In 2017, a delegation led by Robinson Faria, the governor of the State of Norte del Rio, Brazil, visited CHINT and held discussions on strengthening communication and mutual trust, advancing strategic cooperation in the field of new energy, and localized investment and construction, and jointly signed three strategy cooperation framework agreements.
In addition to cooperating with local partners to provide equipment and solutions at various Brazilian states, in recent years, the importance of clean energy has become more and more important. Industrial and commercial distributed photovoltaic system solutions have broad market prospects in Brazil, and we also plan to play a more significant role in the local green energy transition.” said Jackie Xiang.
As early as 2017, CHINT signed a supply agreement with its Brazilian partners, and provided 80MW high-efficiency AstroTwins PV modules in 2018, to the company’s power stations, contributing to Brazil’s energy reform and power development.
At present, CHINT has participated in the construction of several industrial and commercial PV power stations in Brazil, such as the 5MW+2MW industrial and commercial project of TELLES Group, which not only meets the customers’ self-generated electricity demand, but also realizes the surplus electricity to generate income.
The project has been fully put into operation in September 2020, and 16,000 solar panels from CHINT were installed on 6 hectares areas. CHINT takes an EPC role from early design, procurement, to on-site construction, grid connection and maintenance.
In the face of the unexpected pandemic and the complicated international situation, CHINT will flexibly adjust the localization strategy according to the actual situation.
In the future, relying on the Brazilian subsidiary, CHINT plans to establish offices and regional warehouse logistics centers in the four major regions of Brazil, moving R&D and production forward, which aims to realize localized manufacturing, and participate in large-scale power facility general contracting projects in the Brazilian market.
In the future, we hope that CHINT will take roots and grow in Brazil, move closer to service the market, and create more value for customers. At the end of the interview, Jackie said, “We treat customers as family members and grow up with our customers. From the beginning when customers did not recognize made-in-China products, to now they actively promote the CHINT brand, we are very touched and sparked.”
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