Recently, led by the Zhejiang government, the news of Zhejiang businessmen chartering a plane to Europe to grab orders get the trending topic. Encouraging enterprises to go out has become a major focus of the Chinese government to promote economic work at the end of 2022.

While Hailiang foreign trade, from the second half of 2022, has taken the step to go out. In the past few months, there were dynamics of sales managers and salesmen going abroad to exhibit and visit customers one after another.

From November 19, Hailiang International Trade General Manager Wu Changming and European Market Manager Shou Qiaomei went to Europe for a 20-day visit, almost a month earlier than the group of Zhejiang businessmen who went abroad. Mr. Wu, who spent two-thirds of the year running around the world before the epidemic, was overwhelmed with emotions about this trip to Europe after 3 years.

I never thought that I would stay in China for 3 consecutive years. My whole work and life status has changed because of the epidemic. This trip to Europe was actually planned for a long time, but due to the epidemic prevention policy and visa problems, it was delayed again and again, and finally implemented at the end of this year.

The list of customers to be visited submitted by salesmen was getting longer and longer, and I deeply felt their eagerness to communicate with customers directly face to face. I hope that through this visit, I can release a signal to the salesmen of the whole company - it's time for us to go out and actively explore the market!

This time I met many old friends whom I had not seen for several years, and also new friends whom I could only meet through internet communication during the epidemic. Through the conversation, I could feel that our customers had the same confusion as us about how to carry out foreign trade activities smoothly in the post-epidemic era, and at the same time, we were all full of expectation and confidence that the global economy would definitely recover.

2022 was a difficult year, facing various derivative risks caused by the Covid-19, and various hesitations from overseas customers to place orders to Chinese suppliers.

In the face of many unfavorable factors, Hailiang's foreign trade team maintained its consistent work enthusiasm and actively did a good job in reassuring customers. At the same time, they made maximum use of the resources provided by the company to coordinate and dispatch, and responded flexibly, and delivered a bright report card to the shares and the group, with an expected 18% increase in sales year-on-year.

The excellent results achieved by Hailiang's foreign trade cannot be separated from Hailiang's industrial policy of global layout and the strong support of each production base, which gives more room for the foreign trade team and helps Hailiang's copper pipe foreign trade business to be stable and good.

For example, as the largest production base of Japanese customers, Shanghai factory was able to do a good job of logistic support and psychological pacification of all factory employees and ensure the stable production and shipment of orders, despite the quarantine for more than 100 days from April to May this year.

Moreover, by recommending customers to place orders in Vietnam factory and Thailand factory, we have successfully kept customers who wanted to change suppliers due to anti-epidemic policy and unstable shipping.

Since 2010, Hailiang International Trade has been continuously setting up offices and sales companies in customers' localities, which has grown to 10 sales companies.

It was these sales companies that played a huge role during the three years when the head office salesmen were unable to travel. While taking care of their own sales tasks, they also assisted the domestic salesmen and actively did a good job in customer visits and after-sales work.

In this visit to Europe, we were accompanied by Xiaolong from the Turkey office and johannes from Hailiang's German Menden factory.

As time flies, 2022 is nearing the end, and even the good achievements will become the past. As the foreign trade people of Hailiang, we always do advance planning and have now started to make layout and preparation for next year's sales target.

With the adjustment of the anti-epidemic policy, and the implementation of various measures to stabilize growth at all levels of government, as well as the message conveyed by the important statement of the Party's 20th National Congress to promote the development and growth of private economy, as one of the representatives of private enterprises in Zhejiang, Hailiang will also continue to maintain a stable and healthy development in the new year, and contribute more to the economic development of Zhejiang and even the whole country.