In recent years, Shandong Heavy Industry Group has significantly bolstered its overseas market development and international brand enhancement through comprehensive efforts in R&D, production, marketing, and service. Its products have achieved substantial market shares in sectors such as marine engines, power generation equipment, commercial vehicles, and construction machinery, evolving into mid-to-high-end international brands that compete on par with leading European and American brands. Over the past three years, the company's export revenue has consistently grown by over 50% annually. In 2024, export revenue reached 97.7 billion yuan, marking a year-on-year increase of 14%, with significant growth across all major product lines. With systematic and comprehensive coordination across its global operations, Shandong Heavy Industry is expanding its high-end, brand-oriented, and industrialized presence on the global stage.
### Outstanding Achievements and Expansion into New International Markets
In the international market, Shandong Heavy Industry has defied challenges and achieved steady growth in heavy truck exports. In 2024, it exported 193,000 heavy trucks, accounting for 63% of China's total heavy truck exports. Sinotruk, a key subsidiary, has maintained its leading position in the industry's exports. Leveraging its superior quality and advanced technology, Sinotruk has rapidly increased the proportion of high-end product exports to over 40%, earning significant recognition for its brand value in the international market.
At the 2024 South Africa Mining Machinery and Power Energy Exhibition held in September, Shantui showcased several star products, presenting a lineup of powerful, advanced, and reliable equipment. This demonstrated Shantui's technological prowess and innovation achievements in the construction machinery sector to the international market. Shantui leads market trends and drives change by reconfiguring its marketing channels, business models, and service systems. In 2024, Shantui's export revenue reached 7.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 28%. Its integrated construction solutions offer optimal product combinations, lowest unit costs, and digital management capabilities, shining with technological brilliance and brand strength on the global stage.
In October 2024, 186 units of Zhongtong buses were delivered to Armenia in batches. These included gas-powered buses and dual-source trolleybuses, contributing to the local public transportation's green transformation and development. This delivery followed a major order of 211 units in 2021, further validating the unique appeal of the Zhongtong brand and setting a "new benchmark" for the global public transportation industry. The international market's firm choice underscores the strong recognition of Shandong Heavy Industry's bus segment, enabling it to achieve a 61.3% year-on-year growth in bus exports in 2024.
Weichai seized global market opportunities by continuously improving its global market network and channel layout, innovating sales models, leveraging internal synergy, and accelerating the overseas market penetration of high-end products. It provides differentiated solutions for global customers, consolidating its leading position and enhancing its global brand influence. In 2024, Weichai's data center power generation products achieved strategic breakthroughs in high-end markets such as Europe, America, and Southeast Asia, with export revenue increasing nearly sixfold year-on-year.
### Demonstrating Strength and Building a Strong Brand Matrix
Brand is the key to opening markets and a powerful tool for enterprises to remain competitive. Within the Shandong Heavy Industry family, brands like Weichai, Sinotruk, Shantui, Lovol, Zhongtong, German KION, and Italian Ferretti are well-established leaders in their respective fields, holding significant positions in the global industry. Since 2023, Shandong Heavy Industry has hosted three global partner conferences and new product exhibitions overseas, showcasing its industrial strength and fostering closer ties with customers. In 2024, it held global partner conferences and product exhibitions in Mexico, France, Germany, and other locations, further presenting its product portfolio and brand matrix to global and regional customers, enhancing brand recognition among global clients.
At the 2024 IAA Commercial Vehicles, the world's largest and most influential commercial vehicle exhibition, companies under Shandong Heavy Industry, including Weichai Group, Sinotruk, Shaanxi Heavy Duty Truck, FAST, HANDE Axle, Zhongtong Bus, and Yaxing Bus, showcased their latest green and intelligent products across the entire chain. Its strong technical capabilities and continuous innovation have enabled Shandong Heavy Industry to lead the industry and provide global customers with cleaner, more efficient, smarter, and more comfortable outstanding products.
Shandong Heavy Industry continues to invest resources, expand business synergy, and build a multi-field product portfolio and first-class brand matrix. With a focus on customer satisfaction and the principle of "synergy to create value for customers," it brings more opportunities and opens up unlimited possibilities for global partners and customers.
Since December 2024, Weichai, Sinotruk, Zhongtong Bus, Shantui, and Weichai Lovol have successively held the 2025 Global Supply Chain Strategic Partner Conferences, inviting global strategic suppliers such as Bosch, ZF, and CATL to participate. This further consolidates the highly trusted, closely collaborative, and mutually beneficial partnership with global suppliers, striving to build a first-class supply chain ecosystem in the industry.
### Integrated Linkage and Comprehensive Service Improvement
"Product + service" dual-track development is crucial for not only "going global" but also "penetrating deeply." To date, Shandong Heavy Industry has established nearly 300 overseas offices and over 1,200 marketing channels worldwide, with 36 trading platform companies in 25 countries, 46 overseas factories (including KD factories), and achieved local assembly and manufacturing in 31 countries. Nearly 2,000 employees are stationed overseas, and its enterprises have established a robust global network system.
The strategy of leveraging strong brands to support weaker ones and large enterprises to assist smaller ones, combined with group sales, is a powerful advantage of Shandong Heavy Industry's overseas expansion. By fully utilizing the overseas channel network advantages of Sinotruk and Weichai, it promotes the sharing of overseas channel agents and strategic customer resources with Shantui, Zhongtong Bus, and Weichai Lovol, etc. The group has over 1,200 overseas channels, among which 297 are shared, driving rapid growth in other business segments such as buses, construction machinery, and agricultural equipment within the group.
Currently, Zhongtong Bus has achieved comprehensive coverage across four key product segments-tourism, commuting, public transportation, and school buses-in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Over the past two years (2023-2024), Zhongtong Bus has consistently ranked first in market share among Chinese brands in the UAE. Notably, in 2024, its market share exceeded 50%, with continuous improvements in customer satisfaction and market reputation.
Zhongtong Bus's success in the UAE is largely attributed to resource sharing and market collaboration with its sister companies within the Shandong Heavy Industry Group, particularly Weichai Power and Sinotruk. Since its large-scale entry into the UAE market in 2019, Zhongtong Bus initially faced a relatively weak market foundation. Starting from 2023, Zhongtong Bus enhanced its market coordination with Sinotruk by leveraging Sinotruk's well-established local channels. This strategic partnership enabled Zhongtong Bus to gain deeper insights into market dynamics and secure access to strategic customers.
Simultaneously, Zhongtong Bus has deepened its cooperation with Weichai Power. The two companies have jointly conducted customer research, co-developed products, optimized product performance, improved product structure, and made significant adaptive enhancements to their offerings. In terms of service support, they have achieved seamless coordination. Currently, 80% of Zhongtong Bus's vehicles in the UAE are equipped with Weichai Power engines.
Shandong Heavy Industry has also invested in establishing operational centers in key locations such as Dubai and Singapore. Additional regional operational centers in Central Asia, South America, and Africa are currently under planning and development. Moving forward, the group aims to integrate after-sales service, spare parts supply, logistics, training, and financial support through a unified service platform. This comprehensive approach will further strengthen Shandong Heavy Industry's global market service support system, positioning it as a leading multinational group in high-end equipment manufacturing with a strong presence in the global market.
