- 06 December 2006 -
A Report from SFCHINA
by Greg Valero, g.valero@elsevier.com

We just came back from attending the SFCHINA show held last month in Shanghai, where we learned a great deal about the Chinese surface finishing industry. What we found is a marketplace starving for the latest technical information as it attempts to keep up with a country that continues to build an infrastructure for three-billion-plus people.

SFCHINA attracted some 10,000 visitors, a figure that continues to swell each year, according to show organizers. As you might expect, most attendees were local surface finishers. The remaining delegates came from all over the world, although quite a few were from the Asia-Pacific region.

The majority of local surface finishers are situated in and around the coast line of China, areas such as Guangzhou and Shanghai that provide easier access to importing and exporting goods and materials. There is plenty of work to go around as the China economy is reportedly growing by eight to 10% annually. To put it in perspective, China is on pace to outgrow the combined plating business of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

Show visitors were hungry for information, as evidenced by jam-packed aisles and booth spaces that made entering the exhibit hall, navigating the show floor, and meeting with exhibitors challenging. Product brochures, literature, and other technical information were literally flying off the shelves, according to exhibitors that Metal Finishing spoke to. The technical conference sessions—which were significantly fewer in number compared to SUR/FIN—were well attended; several were translated into either English or Chinese.
SFCHINA also had staying power. The three-day show, held Nov. 16 to 18, appeared to draw a similar number of attendees on each day. Exhibitors reported steady traffic and a large number of leads.

China is obviously a very sensitive issue in the U.S. manufacturing community as there is a significant trade deficit between the two countries. In speaking with suppliers who service China, technology-wise, the industry is still in its infancy stages. There are still a number of shops that lack the technical know-how and marketing savvy of their U.S. counterparts.

But clearly, this competitive gap is closing as more and more China-based surface finishers learn about the latest technologies and best practices. Which may help explain why SFCHINA attendance continues to grow year after year. Whether these job shops can continue undercutting prices of local competitors to win business in the States will depend largely on a number of factors, ranging from currency manipulation, labor costs, environmental and workplace regulations, to energy costs and U.S. trading policies.