China Chemical Industry News Sanfeng Turbine Building Corporate Culture with the Grace of Nature

Deep in the western part of the Dabie Mountains, in the city of Guangshui, Hubei Province, there’s a company that has been around for more than 60 years. Over that time, it has grown into a backbone player in China’s fan and blower industry, a nationally recognized “Little Giant” (a title for highly specialized and innovative small and medium enterprises), and a provincial manufacturing champion (meaning it’s the best in its specific product category). That company is Hubei Sanfeng Turbomachinery Equipment Co., Ltd., or SFTB for short.

Three-tailed Turbine Bird's-eye View 1

Throughout SFTB’s journey, one core philosophy has become part of the company’s DNA:

“Make products as if climbing the highest mountain, deliver service as fluid and adaptable as water, and build the company with people at the very peak.”

This is not just the spiritual backbone of SFTB — it’s the inner engine that keeps driving the company to climb higher and push further in the high-end equipment manufacturing race.

Make products as if scaling the highest peak” — Keep innovating and climbing to new heights.

Make products as if scaling the highest peak" is the product philosophy etched into SFTB's DNA. Throughout the company's product development history, one goal has never changed: break the stranglehold of foreign technology and create high-quality Chinese replacements.

Back in 2013, the domestic papermaking turbine market was almost entirely controlled by foreign companies. Chinese firms had no choice but to import, facing not only sky-high prices but also the real risk of being choked off from key technology. SFTB's technical team studied the actual needs of China's papermaking industry and independently developed a high-efficiency turbine. Peng Kun, Vice General Manager of SFTB, explained: “This product didn't just make breakthroughs in energy saving and structural design — for the first time, it outperformed and outclassed foreign competitors in both function and quality.” It reached advanced international standards overall and laid a solid foundation for replacing imports with homegrown technology.

In 2016, China ramped up its environmental crackdown on industrial plants, and zero liquid discharge suddenly became a hard requirement for many industries. At that time, the mainstream centrifugal steam compressors on the Chinese market were still controlled by foreign companies. SFTB once again stepped up to the challenge and developed its own centrifugal steam compressor specifically designed for zero liquid discharge systems, successfully replacing imported equipment. Today, this homegrown zero liquid discharge system is widely used across the chemical, pharmaceutical, steel, and petrochemical industries. Just one company — Hubei Benxing Chemical — has installed seven of these systems, winning real market trust through real results.

To keep its technology at the cutting edge, SFTB has built a provincial-level enterprise technology center, an engineering research center, and an industrial design center, along with dedicated R&D bases in Wuhan and Tianjin. This has created an innovation setup that combines "manufacturing in Guangshui, R&D in Wuhan, and R&D in Tianjin." Today, the company houses over 400 pieces of high-end processing and testing equipment. In the last three years alone, it has produced 58 new patents, bringing its total number of granted patents to 145. The company has also led or helped write a series of national, industry, and group standards.

SFTB's self-developed “technology for separating complex solvents containing salt" was selected for the National Recommended Catalog of Energy-Saving and Carbon-Reducing Technologies and Equipment (2025 Edition) — its heat pump can achieve a coefficient of performance as high as 11.7. Meanwhile, its “centrifugal heat pump distillation unit for acetone recovery” made it into the 2025 Hubei Province Recommended Catalog of Innovative Product Application Demonstrations. This unit marks the first time heat pump technology has ever been applied to the acetone recovery distillation process in MIBK production plants. ”So far, eight of our product types have been certified as the very first of their kind made in China. Twenty-two products or technologies have passed official scientific evaluation — ten of them have reached advanced international levels, and eleven are at the leading domestic level." As SFTB's General Manager Xiong Ziqiang talked about these achievements, his face lit up with a smile.

In September 2025, SFTB was named an "Excellent-level Smart Factory" by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology — the only company in the entire city of Suizhou to receive this national honor. What lies behind this recognition is the company's relentless drive for perfection in manufacturing. With the launch of its Smart Green General Machinery Industrial Park, SFTB has now achieved seamless coordination across the entire process, from customer orders right through to design, process planning, and production.

Deliver service as fluid as water” — Be highly efficient and warm every customer’s heart.

Water benefits everything without competing with anything. "Deliver service as fluid as water" is SFTB's service philosophy — and the key to winning market reputation and building customer trust. As General Manager Xiong Ziqiang puts it: “The heart of great service is thinking what customers think and worrying about what they worry about. We stick to one simple promise: top-class products deserve top-class service, and we back that up with fast, professional action.”

There's a story that captures this well. A company in Shandong was working on a civil heating project and suddenly had its deadline for four large ventilation fans slashed from two months to just one week. One after another, other manufacturers turned them down — but SFTB took on the challenge. They quickly formed four dedicated teams and worked around the clock. In just six days, the products were delivered to the construction site. That level of commitment earned the customer's deep respect and led to a long-term partnership. And this is just one of many such service stories in SFTB's history.

From domestic industries like petrochemicals, coal chemicals, fine chemicals, papermaking, thermal power, rail transit, steel, and non-ferrous metals, to a growing footprint overseas — wherever SFTB's products go, its service follows. Today, the company's products are not only found all across China but are also exported to many countries and regions. And excellent service has become one of SFTB's brightest “calling cards.”

To make sure they can really “respond fast and cover everything,” SFTB has built a comprehensive nationwide service network with service points covering all five major regions of China. They've also set up a digital service command center, a remote monitoring and fault diagnosis platform, and a 24/7 open communication channel — so no matter where a customer is, they can get support from SFTB in the shortest possible time. “Three out of four people on our sales team are professional engineers,” said Yuan Shengyong, SFTB's chief engineer, with pride. “They know sales, yes, but more importantly, they know the technology and the products inside and out. They can directly provide customers with professional technical advice, solution design, and problem-solving. That has hugely improved our service efficiency and made customers trust us even more.”

Xiong Ziqiang sums it up: “Service should flow like water. Only by always staying focused on customer needs, constantly improving our service system, and raising the quality of our service, can we keep the water of service flowing and nourish our growth together with our customers.”

Build the company with people as the peak” — This is how we lay the foundation for lasting growth.

People are the root of a company’s growth — and the solid foundation on which it climbs to new heights. “Build the company with people as the peak” is SFTB's talent philosophy. Over the past 60-plus years, the company's journey has been one long story of gathering, nurturing, and empowering talented people. SFTB knows deeply that talent is the source of innovation and the very foundation of development. Behind every single breakthrough the company has made, there are countless dedicated people giving it everything they've got.

To make sure talented people stay and grow, SFTB has put in place a complete system for developing talent and helping them advance in their careers. The company runs a “pass it on, bring along, guide the way” mentoring tradition: senior experts and veteran employees teach younger staff hands-on, passing down technical know-how and working methods without holding anything back, so the young team members can grow fast. As General Manager Xiong Ziqiang explains, “Here, it's very common to see fathers and sons, husbands and wives, or brothers and sisters working side by side.”

When it comes to growing talent, SFTB also teams up deeply with universities and research institutes, building a model where industry, academia, and research work together. The company has long-term partnerships with well-known Chinese universities like Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Tianjin University. Together, they've built shared R&D platforms, tackled key technical challenges side by side, and jointly trained graduate students and specialized technical professionals.

More than 60 years of forging ahead through fair weather and storm — SFTB's history is a real-life story of how a company's culture can drive its development forward. “Make products as if scaling the highest peak, deliver service as fluid as water, build the company with people as the peak” — these 21 characters are now so deeply woven into SFTB's blood that they've become the code of conduct and the shared value pursuit of every SFTB person.

Xiong Ziqiang says that SFTB Turbomachinery will keep pushing full steam ahead on the paths of energy-saving, carbon reduction, and replacing foreign imports with homegrown technology. In the high-end equipment manufacturing arena, the company will continue climbing, writing a new chapter of “building a 10-billion-yuan enterprise, running a century-old factory, and serving the country through industry.” SFTB is determined to contribute even more strength to China's industrial economy and its green, low-carbon transformation.