606: Strong outside and hard at the same time

While Lin Zhenhua and Hege were having a good conversation, at the booth of the German Alk Company of the exhibition center, Sales Director Khedira was looking at the direction of the Chinese exhibition hall from afar, feeling mixed feelings.

The Chinese are becoming more and more arrogant, especially the Chinese named Lin Zhenhua, who simply does not hide their ambition to dominate the global equipment market. If this continues, will there be room for our Western companies in this market in the future?

Khedira and Lin Zhenhua did not have many deals. The last deal was in the late 1980s, which had been more than 10 years since now. But that was the one that impressed Khedira so deeply. When he thinks about it, he still thinks it is a nightmare.

That time, Khdira spoke to China on behalf of Alk to discuss the 450,000-ton ethylene transformation project of Jiangbei Petrochemical. Hanhua Heavy Industry broke out halfway and asked Alk to transfer 300,000-ton ethylene technology to China as a condition to undertake the 450,000-ton transformation project.

Of course, Khdira chose to refuse such a request first. But Lin Zhenhua played a trick. He invited Khdira and his party to the Petrochemical Design Institute to show them the results of the Chinese high ethylene research currently underway. Khdira was blinded for a moment and mistakenly thought that China's research was enough to form a breakthrough. In order to kill China's research efforts, he persuaded Alk headquarters to agree to the transfer of technology to China.

The following year, due to political reasons, alk joined the economic sanctions on China and suspended the 450,000-ton ethylene project of Jiangbei Petrochemical under construction. Later, Khdira heard that Hanhua Heavy Industry took the lead and led domestic petrochemical companies in China to take over the half-way project and successfully completed the project.

This is not counting. In the following years, Hanhua Heavy Industry used the knowledge obtained from Alk to form a series of large-scale ethylene complete equipment design and construction technologies with independent intellectual property rights, including 300,000 tons, 450,000 tons, 600,000 tons, 800,000 tons, 800,000 tons, which not only monopolized all new large-scale ethylene projects in China, but also went abroad to compete with international petrochemical equipment giants including Alk for the market in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and other places.

It took a long time for Khedira to figure out what happened back then. After repeated consideration of the whole thing dozens of times, he finally came to a terrible conclusion: he was indeed deceived by Lin Zhenhua. Although Hanhua was indeed developing daethylene back then, there was still a big gap from the final breakthrough. If Alk did not transfer technology to Hanhua, Hanhua would have to explore at least another three or five years.

In addition, he was wrongly judged by Hanhua's determination. He thought that as long as Alk transferred technology to Hanhua, Hanhua would give up independent innovation and become a slave to the transfer of technology. In fact, Hanhua is a very ambitious enterprise. If it seeks technology transfer from other enterprises, its only purpose is to develop its own technology based on the transfer of technology.

Khedira did not dare to say his judgment in the company because this was a stain in his marketing career. Once it was made public, he would lose all his face in the company. Over the years, whenever he thought of Hanhua Heavy Industry, he felt a deep sense of frustration. At the beginning, he thought that he had successfully plotted against Hanhua Heavy Industry, but the other party deliberately pretended to be stupid and used his conceit to trick him. How could such a sinister opponent not make people creepy?

Two days ago, Nuzama, the Minister of Industry of Goma, Africa, came to the booth of Alk, and found Khdira, and talked about the equipment bidding for the country's equatorial thermal power plant. Nuzama is a die-hard fan of Alk and has a heartfelt admiration for Alk's technology. However, since this thermal power plant project was built by the World Bank loan, Goma must conduct global bidding for the equipment. Nuzama asked Khdira to verify whether Alk can be invincible when competing with other competitors.

"Alk's technology is world-leading. We are the best in terms of gas turbines for power generation, no one!" Khdira said to Nuzama in a confident tone.

"But, Mr. Khedira, China Hanhua Heavy Industry said that their gas turbine technology has exceeded Alk. Do you think this is possible?" Nuzama asked pitifully. He was taught a lesson in Hanhua, and now he can only come to Alk to support him.

"Do you think it's possible?" Khdira asked back with a sneer, "You know, when they first started working on steam turbines, they were..."

Speaking of this, Khdira stopped and remembered the unbearable past. Yes, the steam turbine technology that Hanhua first obtained was transferred by Alk, which was a steam turbine used as the power of ethylene compressor. Although the gas turbine developed by Hanhua later borrowed more from Ukrainian technology, the foundation laid by Alk for it was also very important.

Nuzama didn't think about what it would be if he was swallowed by Khedira. He just took out the technical information given to him by Hanhua and handed it to Khedira, and said, "Mr. Khedira, you know that I have always believed in Alk's technology. But our power plant project is a World Bank project after all. If we want to choose Alk's ultimately, we still need to provide reasons for the World Bank to accept it. Look, this is the gas turbine information provided by Hanhua Heavy Industry. Can you compare it for me and see what the gap between their technology and your Alk's technology."

Khdira has never looked down on Nuzama, thinking that this guy is technically a half-baked and not very good in character. Over the years, when Nuzama cooperated with Alk, she often made excuses to ask Alk to provide him with some personal benefits, including funding him to travel abroad, and providing his family with some luxury goods from Europe, etc. Khdira likes such incompetent and greedy partners, but it does not mean that he will have a sense of respect for such partners.

If it were any other time, Khedira would not have the patience to discuss any technology with Nuzama. If you want it, you should, and if you don’t want to get it over, I don’t believe you can find a better supplier than Alk. However, when Nuzama talks about Hanhua Heavy Industry, Khedira had to pay attention. He took the information handed over by Nuzama, took a rough look, and then handed it over to the engineer Frederick next to him.

Frederick is an expert in steam turbines and gas turbines. When Khdira was fooled by Lin Zhenhua last time, Frederick was also present, and he personally talked with Zhang Yihua, the chief engineer of Hanhua's steam turbine research, who was in charge of steam turbine research. After taking the information transferred by Khdira, Frederick looked carefully with his myopia glasses for more than ten minutes, and couldn't help but exclaim: "My God, I really can't believe that these are true. If they can do all these indicators, then China will really go ahead of us."

"Frederick, do you know what you are talking about?" Khdira angrily said to Frederick in German. Fortunately, he knew that Nuzama did not understand German. Khdira felt that there was nothing to say with people like Frederick. I asked you to come to the exhibition to brag about your products. Even if the Chinese people's technology is really better than themselves, you can't say it in front of customers, right?

Frederick seemed to understand a little, and quickly switched to German: "Mr. Khedira, what I said is true. In fact, I have been paying attention to the progress of the Chinese in gas turbines over the years. They have made many breakthrough results in high-temperature powder metallurgy materials. I have read their academic papers published in journals. I just didn't expect that they would apply these results to production so quickly. Look at them, they claimed in the data that their gas turbines can work at an initial temperature of 1,600 degrees, which means that the performance of the blade materials they used completely exceeds ours."

"How is this possible?" said Khdira. "How can Chinese people surpass us?"

Frederick said: "Mr. Khedira, you are a market-oriented person and don't know much about the development of technology. Chinese people have invested a lot in technology research and development and industrial equipment over the years. For this Hanhua Heavy Industry, it has built the world's largest free forging machine and die forging machine. The pressure of its die forging machine can reach 80,000 tons, which is precisely the most critical equipment for manufacturing high-temperature powder metallurgy materials. Our research department has never been able to produce better high-temperature materials, and the reason is that we lack such critical equipment."

The two were muttering in German, and Nuzama could only look at the faces of the two of them and guess what they were saying. Seeing that the expressions of the two of them were not very pleasant, Nuzama guessed a little, and then interrupted timidly: "Sir, who do you think the Chinese skills are stronger than the Alk?"

Khdira's face turned purple like pork liver, and he said awkwardly: "Minister Nuzama, you should know that it is difficult to fully evaluate who is better and who is inferior in terms of industrial technology. Different companies have different technical characteristics and their own strengths, so it is a very stupid statement to say who is more advanced."

Damn it! Didn’t you just say that alk is the best in the world, and there is no such thing as one? After reading other people’s information, you started saying that it’s hard to evaluate what it is? Bah, you obviously have to let the Chinese compete, but you are still pretending to be here. Nuzama was so angry that he couldn’t vent his anger to Khdira. The Minister of Industry of a European country is really not confident in front of large Western enterprises.

"Mr. Khedira, we may be going to trade soon. Personally, I really hope that Alk will win the bid. But you also know that the Bank has many strict regulations on bidding. The Chinese claim that their products are more than 10% cheaper than Alk, so..." Nuzama said hesitantly.

"Minister Nuzama, you are building a power plant, not buying discounted clothing on the streets of Berlin. You should know that price is never the most important consideration. Our Alk's experience in power plant construction is incomparable to anyone. I think the experts of the World Bank are also very clear about this." Khdirane said to Nuzama with a tough bullet and even he himself knew it. Such words can only be described as being strong on the outside and doing the middle.

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Chapter completed!