Today, Neway is able to supply a broad valve product portfolio which was established on the basis of flexible response to the changing market and a persistence to maintain quality. Moreover, it has become a reliable one-stop supplier who can satisfy various needs from general purpose to specific application, all the way through severe service to fulfill the needs of all their customers’ projects.
By Laura Wang
Since the end of 2019, Neway has solidified its position in both the global and American market, despite the impact of COVID-19 on sales and marketing. Years of cultivation in the American market has rewarded the Neway North America team insight and deep understanding of local users’ needs and characteristics; however, Neway values its responsibility to users more than its own development. Based on its confidence of the North American markets, Neway takes appropriate actions and continues to invest in order to provide better products and services for valued customers.
When asked about the history of brand development, Mr. Lu Liangfeng, President of Valve Division, Neway shared his opinion: from the macro perspective, the Neway brand has experienced three stages of development — the initial period of establishment in 1997; in 2000 when the brand obtained approvals from major international operators and in 2010 as it entered a period of maturity after rapid development and expansion in the global market. After accumulating significant project experience and building a strong presence in the global market, Neway obtained a number of approvals from key accounts and EPCs globally and became a reliable partner for many projects. “In the future, Neway will focus on brand maintenance and enhancement. Leveraging recent technology breakthroughs through intensive cooperation with end users in the past years, Neway has obtained rich experience and made significant achievements in severe service, as well as in general gate valve and globe valve products. In order to achieve greater customer satisfaction in all aspects, Neway keeps abreast of industry trends and focuses on innovation to meet ever-changing customer needs,” said Mr. Lu.
The development of a brand involves many favorable factors. The development of a brand involves many factors. Neway aims ‘to focus development activity according to the actual situation and to energize development through innovation.’
The Unchangeable
It is undeniable that Neway has accomplished many remarkable achievements in the past. Among the most important, Neway values the reliability and quality of its products. Reliability is the aim which the company always endeavors to pursue, no matter how the company undergoes changes and adjustments in diversified levels. Mr. Lu further explained: “It is undoubted that quality is the core competency of Neway. Take myself as an example, my ultimate goal is always to secure the reliability and quality, whether I am work in the fields of R&D, technical and internal efficiency improvement or management. Quality is the fundamental cornerstone of a brand. Our top management team also emphasizes that those who leave due to cost issues, might come back to you, but those who leave for quality issues will not. Reliability and quality is our unshaken goal for which we continue to invest.”
Neway’s technical knowledge is surely one of the pillars that support its quality and reliability. Neway has invested in building three international R&D centers in China, Italy and U.S.A. The technical team consists of over two hundred personnel and is segmented into four groups, namely: application, R&D, design and process. This four-in-one formula helps to ensure that R&D efforts reflect the application. The outcome is the capability to make correct prediction on the needs of emerging applications and proactively perform research and development.
Efficiency is also a key factor that is considered in tandem with quality. By setting up a standardized and serialized procedure with upstream and downstream suppliers and customers that properly fit each and every party, Neway performs continuous improvement against its working procedure. This has significantly reduced delivery lead times resulting in cost savings — a win-win strategy for both parties. Neway attaches importance to automated production which can improve both productivity and reliability. This means the capability to prevent the loss caused by quality issues and to carry out cost optimization in parallel with producing quality products.
Changing Means Diversification
In recent years, Neway has made sound achievements in various severe applications such as oil and gas, chemical, marine, power generation, long distance transport pipe and nuclear power. One of Mr. Lu’s most memorable projects involves a marine engineering company. “Neway has worked with this company for quite a long time. Our products have been used on every platform built by this company. In the early stages, they mainly used our gate, globe and ball valves — mostly low pressure and stainless steel. Last year, Neway was awarded the major contract of the company’s project which covers all series of valve products with multiple pressure levels and materials. The business scale changed from millions to tens of millions and the cooperation between the companies changed from multiple suppliers to one concentrated contractor. This reflects the clients’ bold confidence in the company, having seen the stable and long lasting performance of our products in the past years. As a supplier, Neway not only provides quality products, but also localized service. No matter where the client’s ship is, we always have a local team/partner to provide professional service. That is how we gain the trust and recognition of our clients.”
Changing lead to innovation, therefore it is always an important driving force in Neway’s development. The company classifies its innovation as upgrading its existing series of available products, alongside the technological upgrading and retrofitting of equipment as process parameters are becoming more stringent. The existing products cannot satisfy the market needs any longer. The company is facing more requests for specialized products which feature larger sizes, higher pressures, higher temperatures, ultra-low temperatures, higher cycle (PDS). Neway has built a specific team regarding such applications which performs R&D work from design, process, inspection and more. Neway actively researches new trends in the market to lead the market in the innovation of industrial valves. It places a strong emphasis on clean energy and related high-end valve products including cryogenic valves and hydrogen valves. Based on long term market investigation and prediction, it has recognized that the energy market is transferring from traditional energy to cleaner, renewable options. End users need more types of clean energy valve products such as cryogenic and hydrogen valves; among these, cryogenic valves represent a steep increase. Neway is quite sophisticated in supplying such valve products. Besides the energy industry, Neway intends to pay more attention to the market needs of the fine chemical segmentation. The aim is to improve its capabilities in the project business and provide a complete set of valve solutions for customers in the chemical industry.
“What we would like the end user market to know is that Neway is not just outstanding in manual valves. We have also made numerous remarkable achievements in the field of actuated valves. Take the high cycle valves for example, they are needed by PP, PX, back purging facilities, etc., and might have an annual on/off frequency as high as one hundred thousand cycles. These types of applications are very demanding in terms of hard sealing. To overcome these application challenges, a batch of 2” high cycle valves was developed by our team. These valves are the result of hard work and troubleshooting difficult technical problems. In 2019, we supplied 30 high cycle valves for that project and received favorable feedback from the user; more orders were placed in 2020 and 2021, totaling 119 valves.”
Neway has made significant investment into the development of cryogenic valve technology, achieving sound performance with the cryogenic ball valve and butterfly valves suitable for LNG vaporizing stations and LNG terminals. Neway has also logged the longest, stable performance of the largest on/off ball valve which has been in use for over a year.
As the market for ball and butterfly valves continues to grow rapidly each year, Neway is apt to meet the volume. To satisfy the need for producing specialty butterfly valves, Neway has invested in a new factory for butterfly valves and actuated valves which will go into operation in the fourth quarter of 2021 and it will cover 67000sqm, increasing the total production capacity by around USD $230 million. “We have always been keen to provide a complete set of industrial valve solutions since the establishment of our brand and that remains our unchangeable pursuit. What keeps changing is our product and service capabilities expanding,” Mr. Lu said.
Under the COVID-19 Pandemic
Regarding the development strategy under the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Lu revealed: “The Americas, especially North America, is a core market that we value highly. Although the pandemic has imposed negative influence on the market, our confidence in the American market never changes and the development strategy for the market remains. We hope to repay the market in this specific time, that is why we maintain and have even increased investment in inventory in terms of types and quantity, rather than shrinking our investment. While trying to serve the market and customers better by getting prepared to satisfy customers’ changing needs, Neway also hopes to provide some positive efforts for local society and the environment. As a matter of fact, the Neway America team is doing well in localization, consisting mainly of Americans. We are not only developing business in this market, we pay attention to the community as well. The healthy development of the society also matters to us. In short, we will hold up our confidence in and knowledge about the American market. In the future, we will even boost our investment here. More and more American clients will see our products and service in the local market and experience the difference between Neway products and others from all perspectives.”
