A thousand times HEUFT, a thousand times top quality!
One thousand systems in less than ten years: a result to be proud of! HEUFT SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY (Shanghai) CO. LTD. recently celebrated this magnificent market success in China together with more than fifty top–class representatives of the Chinese brewing, beverage and food industries at a ceremony.
"We are delighted to have the 1000th HEUFT device installed in China here in the Tsingtao Beer Shanghai Songjiang Brewery", said Liu Yingdi, Vice President of the Tsingtao Beer Group, in his welcoming speech during the celebrations at the beginning of September at the Marriot Hotel, Shanghai. "It is truly a milestone of the cooperation and partnership between HEUFT and Tsingtao Beer". He continued that the HEUFT InLine empty bottle inspector "has been acknowledged as the industrial standard for high speed lines in the brewery industry" and is just as impressive as numerous other HEUFT systems in the plants of China´s leading beer producer due to "professional inspection technology" and "its high efficiency and reliability". According to Liu Yingdi a strong partnership has long since developed between the two companies since the first investment by the Tsingtao Group in a HEUFT solution in 2006: "we are maximising product quality to the satisfaction of our customers with the latest technology offered by HEUFT".
The HEUFT location founded in Shanghai in 2003 was equally successful with numerous other food and drink producers in China: the first of the meanwhile more than 1000 systems sold there was also a HEUFT InLine empty bottle inspector and went to Coca–Cola Minhang. Jürgen Kurz, Managing Director of HEUFT SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY (Shanghai) CO. LTD., pointed this out in his speech. "We also integrated a so–called corner combiner and the HEUFT synchron line flow control system there at that time. This gave us the perfect opportunity to show the Chinese market what HEUFT was capable of". According to Mr Kurz one thing followed another after that – due to the rapid growth of the Chinese economy, the strongly increasing relevance of the keywords "food safety" and "efficiency" and the successful positioning of HEUFT as the technology leader in these important sectors. "I am a notorious optimist " explained Mr Kurz "but I really did not expect that we would be celebrating such a success in China after such a short time".
A huge demand
Rainer Buchholz could only agree with him. The director responsible for the worldwide sales of the German parent company HEUFT SYSTEMTECHNIK GMBH had travelled especially to Shanghai in order to pay tribute to this "important milestone". He passed on the congratulations of the company´s founder Bernhard Heuft, all the members of the management and all the employees worldwide. Mr Buchholz stated that there are also easily 1000 employees at present; a number which has more than doubled since the founding of HEUFT China. "The huge demand for our quality control, inspection, transport optimisation and labelling systems in this country makes a significant contribution to the fact that our production is running at full capacity in Burgbrohl. We owe this growth not least to our faithful customers in China" assured Mr Buchholz.
Stefan Möbs, Deputy Consul General of the German Consulate General Shanghai, confirmed this in his welcoming speech: "HEUFT in China secures jobs in Germany". In return, according to Mr Möbs, the company brings "quality ´Made in Germany´ machinery, entrepreneurial spirit, good labour relations, recruitment and training of skilled personal as well as after sales service" to the People´s Republic. He said that the name HEUFT is perhaps not too well known to the general public but "it is a name which is well known to all those who know what quality means". Quality and safety play an important role when producing and filling drinks for Wang Qi, Vice President and Secretary General of the Chinese Alcoholic Drinks Industry Association (CADA). In his speech he stated that the fact that "a single enterprise can sell more than 1000 devices in China shows that the food safety awareness of the industry has been further enhanced".
Remote service without language barriers
Jürgen Kurz, head of HEUFT China, emphasised that this "remarkable number of systems sold" was also due to the passion of his Chinese employees. In his opinion it is not always easy "to combine and organise German thinking and Chinese culture but it is always exciting to see the final outcome". He was able to show the guests a relevant example via live line–up in the Tsingtao Beer Shanghai Songjiang Brewery: the HEUFT TeleService. Malfunctions from a distance can be detected, analysed and immediately rectified with the tool for online remote service which he gave to the brewery group as a gift to mark the occasion. How this reliably functions due to a multilingual user interface, even when the operator is Chinese and the relevant service employee speaks another language, was impressively demonstrated to the guests using the HEUFT InLine.
Some of them were able to examine the 1000th HEUFT system installed in China on site before the official part of the celebrations: Tom Guo (Deputy Managing Director) and Yong Zhao (Technical Manager) of the Tsingtao Beer Shanghai Songjiang Brewery presented the HEUFT InLine at the plant. In all this was the seventh device of this type which upholds the quality of the empty bottle pool along their filling lines. They all play "an extremely important and useful role" there and represent the "state of the art" in this key area.
