Sany, one of China's flagship machinery groups, is set to become the first engineering company from the Middle Kingdom to launch production in Germany, a move that presages an attack by China's rapidly advancing industrial companies on Europe's engineering market.
Daniel He, Sany Germany's managing director, has told the Financial Times that the industrial conglomerate aims to start production in early 2011 at a plant for concrete pumps that is being built close to Cologne.
Mr He has put his 60-strong German workforce, which will be increased to several hundred once the plant and an accompanying research and development centre start operating, on a mission to conquer the global heartland of engineering. “We want to be at least in a very prominent position in Germany,” he says.