HZ info, Since 2025, the domestic chemical equipment industry has entered a period of in-depth adjustment. The contraction in demand triggered by the downturn of the real estate industry chain, cash flow pressure transmitted layer by layer along the industrial chain, coupled with intensified homogeneous competition in the industry, have left most equipment manufacturing enterprises trapped in operational difficulties such as shrinking orders and surging bad debts.

As the industry hits the bottom of the cycle, how to survive the winter, maintain a solid operational foundation, and achieve a counter-trend breakthrough has become the core proposition for every enterprise.

Recently, Huizheng Information (HZ info) conducted an exclusive interview with Li Qiang, General Manager of Guangdong Jinbaoli Chemical Technology & Equipment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Jinbaoli"), exploring Jinbaoli's practices and thinking in coping with the industry cycle from internal management, business transformation to long-term layout.

Li Qiang, General Manager of Guangdong Jinbaoli Chemical Technology & Equipment Co., Ltd.

Deepening Internal Development: Innovating Organizational Mechanisms to Consolidate the Foundation for Growth

In Li Qiang's view, the core confidence for an enterprise to cope with the industry cycle first comes from the reshaping of internal management capabilities. "During the industry winter, the first thing to do is to strengthen internal capabilities, and the core of doing so is a complete transformation of the management model," Li Qiang stated. The core of Jinbaoli's current internal reform is to establish an incentive system centered on "more pay for more work", while introducing a partner mechanism to fully stimulate organizational vitality.

Having worked at China Resources, Li Qiang is well aware of the core role of a sound corporate culture in enterprise development. In this round of reforms, Jinbaoli has taken tough measures to eliminate negative factors within the team, striving to build a team atmosphere of "taking initiative to cooperate and working together with one heart", replacing internal friction culture with a positive catfish effect. Previously, under Jinbaoli's management model, core operational pressure was concentrated on a small number of senior managers, making it difficult to mobilize employee enthusiasm. The introduction of the partner mechanism has completely changed this pattern: core backbones have become partners, with operational responsibilities and benefits directly bound, shifting from "working for the company" to "striving for one's own future", and the endogenous motivation of the organization has been fully unleashed.

The effectiveness of the reform is directly reflected in the improvement of operational quality. Under the partner mechanism, employees' personal income is directly linked to project payment collection, cost control and operational quality, completely reversing the previous mindset that "payment collection is the company's business". Employees take the initiative to invest energy in controlling costs and payment collection throughout the project process, which not only greatly improves the company's overall sales payment collection efficiency, but also effectively reduces operational costs, building a solid cash flow moat for the enterprise to survive the industry cycle.

Business Restructuring: Breaking Away from Homogeneous Competition through Model Transformation

If internal management reform is the foundation for Jinbaoli to survive the cycle, then the strategic transformation of its business structure is the core driver for it to break through in homogeneous competition. Faced with the industry winter, most enterprises fall into the vicious cycle of "snatching orders at low prices and incurring high bad debts", but Jinbaoli has chosen the opposite approach: it would rather take fewer orders than ensure the quality and payment security of orders.

"The cash flow pressure brought by the downturn of the real estate industry affects the entire industrial chain. The default risks of leading real estate enterprises have made us deeply realize that a single large bad debt could wipe out the enterprise's annual operating results," Li Qiang said. Therefore, one of the core principles of Jinbaoli's current adjustment is to strictly control order quality and resolutely abandon projects with high payment collection risks, which has enabled the enterprise to basically achieve zero bad debts so far and maintain an extremely healthy cash flow in the industry.

While strictly controlling risks, Jinbaoli has completed the core transformation of its business model: from a single supplier of chemical equipment products to a full-service provider of EPC turnkey engineering solutions. Previously, Jinbaoli's core products were mainly single chemical equipment such as reaction kettles and dispersion cylinders, with a high proportion of customers in the architectural coatings sector; today, the proportion of EPC general contracting projects in the company's revenue continues to rise, and the customer structure has shifted from traditional architectural coatings to high value-added fields such as adhesives, resins and special coatings.

In Li Qiang's view, Jinbaoli's core differentiation from its peers has never been the performance advantage of a single product, but its ability to provide customers with full-process, customized overall solutions. "It's like when a customer wants a tea table set, peers can only provide the tea table itself, while we can equip all supporting tools, design and implementation services, provide the most suitable and cost-effective solution for customers, and allocate resources wisely," Li Qiang said. This solution capability stems from Jinbaoli's massive project experience accumulated through years of deep cultivation in the industry, and more from the service philosophy of "solving problems from the client's perspective".

According to reports, the core competitiveness of the benchmark project in the field of resin and special coatings in Henan Province that Jinbaoli won in 2025 came from the front-end services before contract signing – the team optimized the plan, controlled costs and solved core pain points for the customer entirely from the perspective of the client's operation, and finally won the customer's recognition with professionalism and service capabilities.

Expanding Externally: Building a Win-Win Ecosystem with Long-Termism

Having secured its operational foundation and upgraded its business model, Jinbaoli has also set its sights on longer-term growth space. Talking about the core of development in 2026, Li Qiang summarized it with the phrase "unity and synergy". In his view, the long-term development of an enterprise is never unilateral profit, but the win-win cooperation among internal employees, upstream suppliers and downstream customers.

In the domestic market, Jinbaoli has set two core breakthrough directions. First, the in-depth expansion of the northern market. Li Qiang admitted that in the southern market, Jinbaoli's EPC overall solution capability has been widely recognized in the industry, but the northern market still has limited awareness of Jinbaoli, and even many customers have doubts about its basic equipment manufacturing capacity. Therefore, in 2026, Jinbaoli will take the northern market as a core breakthrough area to let the northern market fully recognize the core advantages of its overall solutions. Second, the deep layout of high value-added sectors, completely breaking away from the red-ocean competition of traditional architectural coatings and ordinary industrial paints, focusing on laying out subdivided fields with higher technical thresholds and more stable demand such as resins, special coatings, pharmaceuticals and adhesives, to build the enterprise's second growth curve.

The overseas market will be an important focus for Jinbaoli in 2026. "The era of relying solely on online sales for the overseas market has passed, and localized layout is the core of overseas expansion," Li Qiang said. At the end of 2025, Jinbaoli has set up its own office in Turkey, equipped with direct local employees of the company, becoming a bridgehead for the enterprise's overseas market layout. In 2026, Jinbaoli will successively set up overseas offices in three regions: the Middle East, Africa and South America, to build a complete overseas sales framework; at the same time, it will promote agency cooperation with overseas peers, relying on the cost advantage of China's supply chain and the efficient execution of the domestic team to undertake the implementation of overseas projects and open up growth space in the overseas market.

The fundamental driving force supporting all business layouts is precisely the long-termism philosophy of "unity and synergy". Internally, it achieves win-win cooperation between employees and the enterprise through the partner mechanism; upstream, it establishes a long-term and stable centralized procurement cooperation model with suppliers, abandoning the previous decentralized inquiry and temporary bargaining model, locking in reasonable prices on an annual basis, ensuring timely settlement and payment for the enterprise, and guaranteeing supply efficiency and quality for suppliers, which not only reduces the enterprise's procurement costs, but also achieves long-term win-win with suppliers; downstream, it adheres to honest cooperation with customers, abandons the short-term speculative mentality, truly solves problems from the customer's perspective, and achieves long-term and stable cooperation.

"The confidence of an enterprise to survive the cycle starts with respect and care for every partner. Whether it is employees, suppliers or customers, only when the three parties are united and sincerely solve problems for each other can a positive cycle be formed to survive the industry cycle," Li Qiang stated.