Megatrends fuel series of innovations at SEW-Eurodrive

The era of China being the low-cost factory of the world is coming to a close, as the country makes way for an environment for more sustainable growth following its 12th five-year plan.

Keys to realising such a vision are strategic industries such as automotive and electronics, combined with foreign investment in modern technologies and environment protection.

This evolution of the mainland's foreign trade structure and economic development model is reverberating globally - wherein the movers and shakers are gearing up to respond to such megatrends.

Among keen players is drive engineering specialist SEW-Eurodrive, which has been setting things in motion for more than 80 years. It is one of the pioneers in the field that made it possible to move luggage within an airport, fill bottles in a beverage plant and transport parts across a vast car factory in seconds instead of hours.

With a clear China penetration plan as early as 1997 when it built a plant in Tianjin, SEW-Eurodrive is also among the first European companies to recognise that the country is moving from low-end manufacturing to higher-value technologies. Its local presence has since grown with six assembly plants and 50 sales offices.

Having earned the trust of public and private sectors, SEW-Eurodrive became the exclusive supplier of drive technology applications used in the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing 2008 Olympics. It was also responsible for stage and pavilion applications at Expo 2010 Shanghai.

"SEW-Eurodrive is motivated by the fast-evolving industry in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly China," says managing director Hans Sondermann. "We invested in China not to have the cheapest manufacturing cost but to participate in the market, which soon became our biggest single market globally."