Reborn Industrial Tycoon

Chapter 669 Start small

At that time, private agricultural machinery enterprises had not yet developed. The leading agricultural machinery companies in the country were all state-controlled enterprises, and they also had a particularly deep foundation.

For example, Dongfanghong Agricultural Machinery is a brand of Yituo Group. Yituo Factory is one of the 156 key construction projects during the "First Five-Year Plan" period and is the eldest son of the country's machinery industry.

Although at the technical level, domestic agricultural machinery leaders are still not as good as foreign agricultural machinery giants, after all, they have decades of accumulation and have mastered some core technologies to some extent.

Although Fukang Agricultural Machinery has invested a lot in scientific research, it has insufficient foundation after all. All it has are general technologies and it is lacking in core technologies.

There is no way around this. Traditional agricultural machinery is not an emerging industry, and the accumulation of technology in this traditional machinery manufacturing industry takes time.

For example, international agricultural machinery giants such as John Deere, New Holland, Kubota, and Yanmar all have a history of about a hundred years. Without the accumulation of nearly a hundred years, it is difficult to achieve the status of a giant.

Some relatively young brands, such as AGCO of the United States, although they are "post-90s" companies, they continue to grow and develop by acquiring old brands. For example, they acquired Finland's Vermet, which was once the world's fifth largest tractor manufacturer.

The company also has a history of sixty or seventy years; the Massey Ferguson they acquired was a company established during the Daoguang period.

This is the characteristic of the traditional machinery manufacturing industry. As long as you live long enough, you will naturally become an industry giant.

In this industry, if emerging companies want to catch up with their predecessors, they must find another way. If you follow the same path as others, then latecomers will never be able to catch up with the forerunners.

For example, in the automobile industry, traditional European and American brands have been popular for nearly a hundred years. As latecomers, Japanese brands have been making efforts, but in the minds of ordinary people, Toyota and Honda, which have a history of 60 years, cannot compare with those of Toyota and Honda, which have a history of 90 years.

BBA, in the same way, Hyundai, which has a history of more than 40 years, cannot compare with Toyota and Honda, which has a history of 60 years.

However, Tesla, which is only ten years old, has successfully completed its counterattack.

The reason is that Tesla is different from traditional car companies. They have found a different approach and taken a different path.

The same is true for the agricultural machinery industry. Emerging agricultural machinery companies will never be able to surpass the traditional agricultural machinery giants if they develop step by step. But as long as they choose another path, such as intelligence and unmanned technology, emerging agricultural machinery companies can achieve overtaking in corners.

At the beginning of the 21st century, even 3G has not yet become popular. It is too early to talk about the intelligence and unmannedization of agricultural machinery. What Li Weidong said about "changing the development idea" is not intelligentization and unmanned.

But miniaturization.

…

Just listen to Li Weidong say: "If we produce the same products as those leading agricultural machinery companies, we have no advantages. They have some core technologies, and the quality of the products will be better.

If there is fair competition, we may only be able to gain some market share and make a small profit through price wars. If we really want to make big money, it will not be our turn.

What can be predicted is that in the future agricultural machinery market, foreign agricultural machinery giants will occupy the high-end market, while domestic agricultural machinery can only carve up the mid- to low-end market. Among them, the mid-range market belongs to domestic leading enterprises, and private enterprises like us will most likely not be able to capture it.

Arrived.

As for the low-end market, due to the relatively low threshold, competition will inevitably be very fierce. There will be an influx of a large number of private companies, and even many companies in the mid-range market will move down to seize the low-end market.

In this case, if we want to gain a competitive advantage, we must differentiate, that is, produce products that others do not have, and expand market share by filling gaps in market demand."

"Chairman, I understand what you mean. We used to make agricultural tricycles and cotton harvesters, all of which were differentiated. There was no such product in the domestic market at that time. If we make it, we can make a lot of money!"

Yue Ping An said.

Ni Guilin said from the sidelines: "Chairman, with the development of agriculture today, there are no new crops, and the types of agricultural machinery have been fixed. It is difficult to develop new agricultural machinery."

"The type of agricultural machinery is only one aspect, and the specifications are another aspect. Although the types of agricultural machinery are fixed, the specifications can still change!"

Li Weidong smiled slightly and continued: "As far as I know, domestic agricultural machinery companies are now developing in the direction of high-horsepower agricultural machinery, right?"

Ni Guilin nodded: "High-horsepower agricultural machinery has always been a high-end product on the market, and this aspect is also a weakness of our domestic brands. For example, high-horsepower tractors mainly rely on imports.

Domestic leading agricultural machinery companies, such as YTO Group, have been conducting research and development of high-horsepower tractors. Although their technical level continues to improve, there is still a certain gap between them and the world's top."

"Domestic agricultural machinery companies are researching high-horsepower agricultural machinery to fill the gap left by domestic production. They have also been researching in this area for some years, and the technological breakthroughs and technological accumulation they have achieved are far ahead of us.

If we, like them, develop high-horsepower agricultural machinery, we will already be a lot slower at the start. In this case, we might as well do the opposite.

Others like to make agricultural machinery bigger and bigger, so we make agricultural machinery smaller and smaller. Domestic agricultural machinery leaders are all developing large-scale, high-horsepower agricultural machinery, so we will research lightweight small and micro agricultural machinery!"

"Small and micro agricultural machinery? Is there a market for this thing?" Ni Guilin asked subconsciously.

"General Manager Ni, don't just focus on such big farms, but also pay attention to the small farmers! At least our country's agriculture is still dominated by small farmers. Ordinary farmers only have a few acres of land per household. How can they use it?

Get on the powerful tractor!”

Li Weidong continued: "In addition to our country, Southeast Asia, for example, is basically a large agricultural country, and the population is also relatively dense. The per capita land occupation rate is not high. Many places are also small-scale farmers. These are the main markets for small and micro agricultural machinery!"

Ni Guilin nodded, and then said: "Small and micro agricultural machinery is indeed rare on the market, but this kind of product has low technical content and low threshold. I'm afraid it can be easily copied by others!"

"So what we want to do is to produce small and micro agricultural machinery with a certain technical content. We have to improve the quality and performance of small and micro agricultural machinery. Even if other companies imitate our products, they will not be able to achieve our quality and performance.

, the market is still ours."

Li Weidong continued: "What I hope is that in the end, there will be a situation where big companies look down on it and small companies can't do it. By then, the entire small and micro agricultural machinery market will be dominated by us!"

Small and micro agricultural machinery is indeed a direction for the future development of agricultural machinery.

In the past few decades, the development philosophy of the world's agricultural machinery has been to plant the most land with the fewest people.

Therefore, agricultural machinery is getting bigger and bigger, and its horsepower is getting stronger and stronger. Many large agricultural machinery are stronger than tanks, and those so-called foreign high-end agricultural machinery are all high-horsepower products.

The reason for this is that the United States is the largest agricultural machinery consumer market in the world.

The United States is full of large farms, which are suitable for farming with large agricultural machinery. Many farms require a plane to take a walk. If it were placed in China, let alone a plane ride, just a helicopter could take off and land, and the whole family could live for a year.

The harvest was blown away.

Moreover, labor costs in the United States are extremely expensive. The cost of hiring people to operate agricultural machinery may be more expensive than the agricultural machinery itself. Therefore, in agricultural production, if you can use as few people as possible, use as few people as possible.

At this time, the advantages of large-scale agricultural machinery are revealed. The larger the agricultural machinery, the more land can be operated and labor can be saved.

Based on market demand, American agricultural machinery is naturally getting bigger and bigger and more powerful.

The United States is the main consumer market for agricultural machinery. In order to enter the U.S. market, agricultural machinery companies in other countries can only develop on a large scale.

For example, Japan's Kubota and Yanmar are the world's top agricultural machinery companies, not inferior to John Deere and New Holland. But in such a small place like Japan, how much arable land can there be? So the United States is the main supplier of Japanese agricultural machinery.

export market.

In order to gain a foothold in the U.S. market, Kubota and Yanmar also focus on large-scale agricultural machinery. Such large-scale agricultural machinery plays almost no role in Japanese agriculture and was born entirely for export.

In addition to the United States, major grain-producing areas such as South America, Eastern Europe, and Australia also adopt the large farm model. These areas use American seeds and have also learned from the American large-scale mechanical farming model. Therefore, there is a demand for agricultural machinery.

, and it is becoming more and more like the United States, the bigger the better.

China, India and Southeast Asia are also major food-producing areas in the world. However, these places have large populations, small land area per capita, and many mountainous and hilly areas. There is not much land suitable for large-scale mechanized farming.

For example, in China, except for the two major plains of Northeast and North China, the south is hilly, and the central, western and southwest regions are plateaus. Most areas are not suitable for large-scale mechanized farming.

The situation in India is similar. Although India's climate is very suitable for the development of agriculture, except for the Ganges Plain in the north, there is also no room for large-scale mechanized farming in the Deccan Plateau in the south.

There are a large number of plains in the Indochina Peninsula, that is, the lower reaches of the Mekong River, but that place is Cambodia, one of the poorest countries in the world. How can you afford large agricultural machinery!

Among the island countries in Southeast Asia, half of Sumatra is made up of mountains, most of Kalimantan is made up of mountains, and most of Java is made up of mountains, and none of them have access to large agricultural machinery.

The terrain characteristics of these places are actually very suitable for small and medium-sized agricultural machinery to function, and these are also grain production areas and consumer markets for agricultural machinery products.

However, agricultural machinery giants in developed countries are unwilling to develop small and medium-sized agricultural machinery for these areas.

The reason is naturally because the people in these places are relatively poor!

For those agricultural machinery giants, since they can't make much money, why bother to serve them? It's better to pay more attention to the needs of some wealthy customers.

It can be said that in the past few decades, the demand of the United States has determined the direction of the world agricultural machinery market.

And those poorer countries do not have any industrial systems of their own, nor can they produce agricultural machinery that meets their own needs.

Even if some small and micro agricultural machinery can be produced occasionally, due to insufficient industrial level, they are only low-quality products with poor performance and low efficiency, and are not as practical as raising cows.

It was not until China's agricultural machinery companies began to rise and began to develop various small and micro agricultural machinery for the fragmented land in the country that this industry, which had always been looked down upon by international agricultural machinery giants, began to gradually rise.

A large part of the agricultural machinery exported domestically in later generations are also small and micro agricultural machinery, and the main export targets are also countries along the Belt and Road.

The export enterprises of small and micro agricultural machinery are mainly private enterprises. Those state-controlled agricultural machinery leaders with deep foundation still look down upon this kind of small and micro agricultural machinery.

In this regard, it can be seen from some small and micro agricultural machinery exhibitions in later generations that almost all exhibitors are private enterprises, and most of them are from Hunan, Jiangxi, and Chongqing. This is mainly because the agriculture in these provinces is more suitable for the operation of small and micro agricultural machinery.

In addition to China, there is another country that has been making small and micro agricultural machinery, and that is Japan.

Before the 1980s, Japan had been learning from the United States, and Japan's agricultural machinery industry was also following the United States. Basically, whatever products the United States made, Japan would follow suit.

The development history of Japanese agricultural machinery giants such as Kubota and Yanmar is actually similar to that of many Japanese companies. In the beginning, they were imitators and copycats. When they saw any new products launched by John Deere, they immediately imitated them.

After entering the 1980s, Japan's research and development capabilities began to explode, and Japan's agricultural machinery industry also began to develop its own products. At this time, Japanese agricultural machinery companies also began to adapt to local conditions and develop agricultural machinery products for Japanese agriculture.

Japan’s land area is small and certainly not suitable for large-scale mechanized agriculture. Small and micro agricultural machinery is actually very suitable for use in Japan.

But Japan is pursuing refined agriculture, and small and micro agricultural machinery tailored for the Japanese market also serves this refined agriculture.

For example, Kubota's small and medium-sized rice transplanters and harvesters are not cheap, but their performance is really good, and they produce less waste during operation, making them very suitable for precision agriculture.

Moreover, due to the aging of Japan's population, people engaged in agriculture are gradually getting older. Therefore, Japan's small and micro agricultural machinery has gradually developed towards labor saving and easy operation to facilitate the use of the elderly.

For any machinery, the more labor-saving and easy-to-operate it is, the higher its technological content will be, and the higher the technological content, the higher the price will be.

Although Japan's small and micro agricultural machinery performs very well, there is one key point: it is expensive!

Things are so expensive that farmers in developing countries cannot afford them.

It is also because Japanese products have relatively high technological content, so it is impossible to sell them cheaper.

The result is an embarrassing situation where you can't afford it if I don't lower the price.

In fact, as long as part of the technological content is removed, some prices can be lowered, and in turn, products can be sold to developing countries and gain a higher market share.

But the rigid and stubborn Japanese just don't do this.

Japanese agricultural machinery companies said that they want to be labor-saving, easy to operate, and have high-tech content so that the elderly can easily use them.

However, in most developing countries, young people are the ones farming. What they want is not labor-saving and convenient, but affordable prices.

It can be said that in terms of small and micro agricultural machinery, although Japan’s technology tree is full, it is a pity that it is crooked again!

As Li Weidong said, the market for small and micro agricultural machinery is a piece of meat that big companies look down upon.

And if the quality of small and micro agricultural machinery is improved and the technical barriers to manufacturing are established, it will be difficult for small companies to imitate them.

At that time, there will be a situation where big companies don't bother to do it, but small companies can't do it, and the entire market will be dominated by Fukang Engineering.

This can also be regarded as a means to achieve overtaking in corners in a short period of time.

Moreover, small and micro agricultural machinery can also develop in the direction of smart agricultural machinery in the future.

Intelligent modification of small and micro agricultural machinery is definitely much easier than that of large agricultural machinery.

Starting from small micro-agricultural machinery is also a layout for future smart agricultural machinery.

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