Mr. Feng Guangcheng is the son of a construction worker. When he was 16 years old, he worked as a mason with his father. He became a member of the construction team of a production team at age 21, followed the team to Wuhan at age 29, and returned home to start a business when he was 31 years old. Then he began the journey of challenging and surpassing himself. He led Guangyu Group to grow from scratch to a large private group corporation and one of the leaders of building materials industry in China.
Go in for building industry and forge a steely will power
Mr. Feng Guangcheng, born on September 28, 1951, was the forth out of 7 children in his family in Mashe Village, Yangxun Bridge Town, Shaoxing County. In 1972, Mr. Feng Guangcheng joined the construction team of his father’s Production Team and started his extraordinary journey. In 1980, he went to Wuhan, an important city in West China, and got his first contract for a 2m yuan building near the Wuhan Bridge. The building was highly praised for its high quality, low price and short construction period, and Mr. Feng Guangcheng left the good name of a competent Shaoxing man. The expedition gave him a spacious range of experiences and developed his spirit of hard working and strong will, which laid a firm foundation for the development and strengthening of our company. In 1982, Mr. Feng Guangcheng led a part of the construction team to undertake projects, such as cement factory, machinery factory, garment factory, and knitwear mill, in Hangzhou, Tongxiang and so on. The annual production value reached over 6 million yuan, and it greatly enhanced the strength of the team.
In 1985, Mr. Feng set up Shaoxing No.5 Construction Corporation, and kept his feet with a new appearance in the competitive building market of Shaoxing, Jiaxing and Shanghai. During the five years from 1988 to 1992, Company built about 49 projects with an investment of more than 3 million yuan each and a great number of high-quality projects including Shaoxing Fourth House, Hongqiao Hotel and Keqiao Textile City, and won the awards of “Lanhua Cup” and “Baiyulan Cup”. In 1986, Company was authorized as the 4th grade construction enterprise, promoted to the 3rd grade in 1988, and ranked on the first list of second grade qualified enterprises in Zhejiang Province in 1990. Shaoxing No.5 Construction Corporation became a shining pearl over Zhejiang building industry.
The over ten years’ career and development in building industry built up his steely will and spirit of going through thick and thin, and turned into a powerful spiritual drive and intellectual support for him to lead his company from scratch.
Seize the opportunity to enter the magnificent building materials industry
In the spring of 1992, when Deng Xiaoping made his Southern Tour and reinvigorated the reform process, Mr. Feng Guangcheng seized the opportunity and put forth the general idea relying on the construction industry, speeding up the development of building materials industry and promoting the coordinated development of construction and building materials.
In 1993, after he researched the industry and product structure of the developed area in Guangdong Coast, and analyzed the market of East China, Mr. Feng Guangcheng invested 150 million yuan in a floor wall factory with a 2.1 million-m2/y production line. The Zhejiang Huaqiang Floor Wall Factory was completed just in one year, and the imported equipment was installed, debugged and put into production timely. With the increasing output, more standardized management of sales and Company was put on the agenda. In the first half of 1996, Mr. Feng Guangcheng learned the advanced management of Hansteel, promoted it with Company’s realities and achieved remarkable success. Products won three medals in 1996: China Famous Building Material Product, the golden prize of the forth national building material exhibition and the golden prize of Macao International Fine Work Fair.
In 1994, with the good sales of glass and unmet demand for glass, Mr. Feng Guangcheng invested 360 million yuan in the project of a float glass production line with an annual output of 2.6 million weight cases. It was the crucial period of the state's macroeconomic control. Our company confronted with great difficulties in fund raising and development. Mr. Feng called upon all Guangyu employees to overcome the difficulties together, recruiting senior professional technicians and more than 500 colleges' students, and successfully solved the conflict between short funds and short advanced equipment and talents. On October 18, 1996, the float glass production line of Zhejiang Glass Factory, a key project in Zhejiang and the largest single engineering project in Shaoxing County since the county was founded, was completed for two years and eight month, and put into production. It set an example for Shaoxing township enterprises to adjust the industrial structure and to enter into a new area. On November 12, the first piece of glass was produced. And in 1997, Guangyu float glass of Zhejiang Glass Factory passed the inspection of the national test center and was rated Grade A, which greatly increased the competition of products of Zhejiang Glass Factory.
In 1998, Guangyu Group was founded. With his good comprehensive quality, Mr. Feng Guangcheng was elected chairman and General Manager. At that time, Guangyu Group Co., Ltd. was one of the famous building materials enterprises in China, owning Shaoxing No.5 Construction Corporation, Zhejiang Huaqiang Floor Wall Co., Ltd. and Zhejiang Glass Factory. In the same year, Zhejiang Glass Factory was reformed to a limited company and renamed as Zhejiang Float Glass Industry Co., Ltd. In January 1999, Mr. Feng Guangcheng was appraised as the Top Rural Entrepreneur in China. As the increasing strength of the company and shortly supplied glass market, Mr. Feng Guangcheng resolutely invested the second 600t/d float glass production line in August 2000, which greatly rose the position of Zhejiang Glass in the industry.
Show great foresight, collecting a large amount of funds for rapid development
In order to achieve a rapid development, Mr. Feng Guangcheng decided to list Zhejiang Glass on HKEx.
After the second float glass production line was put into production, Mr. Feng Guangcheng made efforts for the listing of Zhejiang Glass. From August 2000 to June 2001, our company made researches on the securities market and made plans on the listing. During this time, our company did plenty of substantive work and passed the hearing of HKEx. At that time, Zhejiang Glass was the first private enterprise listed on the Share-H market. Without any example, it was obvious that how great the difficulties and how huge the work load. However, that Zhejiang Glass was listed in a very short time surprised the industry. From November 1 to December 10, Zhejiang Glass was begun to list on the HKEx. Mr. Feng Guangcheng overcame a lot of difficulties and launched a 10-day roadshow in Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Italy, Germany and the UK to offer the H-share for sale. All the bitter and the sweet are unimaginable for people never experiencing the roadshow.
Zhejiang Glass was listed as scheduled, published 179 million shares in its IPO and raised 560 million yuan of funds. The success of Zhejiang Glass laid a solid economic foundation for the future development, greatly increased social popularity and industry status of the company, greatly encouraged all the employees to be united and build a powerful Guangyu Group, built up confidence and determination of all employees to overcome difficulties and make great achievements, and started a new generation for a sustained, rapid and sound development of Guangyu Group.
In order to make full use of the raised funds, Mr. Feng Guangcheng timely worked out a Five-Year development plan, putting forward the thought to strengthen, expand and optimize the major business, adjust the industrial structure properly, expand the industry and realize industry upgrading. In 2002, the third 600t/d float glass production line was put into production, and some processing lines for tempering, insulating, coating, laminating and silvering were built. In April and August 2003, the forth glass production line-rolling line and the fifth glass production line-ultra-thin glass line were sequentially put into production. On January 8, 2004, the rolling line was successfully changed to float line. Meanwhile, our company widened its products to soda ash and processed glass, and set up Zhejiang Engineering Glass (Low-E Glass) Co., Ltd. and Qinghai Alkali Industry Co., Ltd. respectively in March and July 2003. Engineering Glass was put into production in June 2004 and the first stage of 900,000-t project of Qinghai Alkali Industry was completed in the second quarter of 2005.
Our company also engaged in the basic materials – cement. In March 2002, Shaoxing Huaqiang Cement Co., Ltd. was founded; in January 2003, our company bought Shaoxing No.2 Cement Factory and established Huahong Cement Co., Ltd.; on April 11, 2003, Shaoxing Huaqiang Cement Co., Ltd. was renamed Zhejiang Cement Co., Ltd.; on April 12, the 1 million-t/y cement production line with new dry-process rotory kilns was completed. From then on, Guangyu Group formally entered the cement industry.
In order to go further in cement industry, Mr. Feng Guangcheng determined to establish three cement clinker bases in Changshan, Changxing and Fuyang, where had plentiful resources. Sufficient funds were greatly needed in rapid expansion. As a result, Mr. Feng Guangcheng again brought forth a new financing concept – voting trust, which aroused great attention in the industry, no less than the success of the fist H-Share of Zhejiang Glass.
On June 26, 2003, products of Zhejiang Cement went public and the promotion activities were ended on July 31. Because of Mr. Feng Guangcheng and high return of cement industry, the first voting trust products were sold well. It collected 211,730,000 yuan of funds for Zhejiang Cement that speeded up the construction of the three cement clinker bases and laid a capital base for the investment of cement projects in Shanxi Fuping, and Guangdong Qingxin.
Thus, Mr. Feng Guangcheng became an expert in fund raising, which improved the ability to protest risks in the process of strengthening and expanding Guangyu Group.
Vigorously develop the basic materials as a major business and build into a leading enterprise of China building material industry
Guangyu Group, led by Mr. Feng Guangcheng, has developed into a large private enterprise and one of the leaders of China building material industry. Our company has 6 billion yuan of total assets, 3.5 billion yuan of net assets, and 6,000 employees, in which 1,600 are economic and technical personnel with bachelor degree and intermediate title or above. Our company owns four subsidiaries: Zhejiang Glass Co., Ltd., Zhejiang Cement Co., Ltd., Zhejiang Technology Co., Ltd. (founded in February 2003 and mainly producing tax-controlled tills), and Zhejiang Chuangsheng Construction Co., Ltd. (built in April 2004). Those four companies have 25 shared-controlled enterprises in or out of Zhejiang Province, involving in industries of glass, cement, electronics and construction.
As the rapid development of China economy, especially the economy in Yangtze River Delta and Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang provincial party committee and government put forth the great goal of “to take a new road to industrialization, and transfer Zhejiang province to an advanced manufacturing base”, which offered a good opportunity to raw material industry. Mr. Feng Guangcheng seized the opportunity and brought up the strategic goal of “to take basic materials as major business” when making the five-year development plan in 2003. In 9 areas of Zhejiang provice (excluding Wenzhou), and 6 provinces such as Qinghai, Sichuang, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Shanxi, Guangyu Group invested in projects of glass, cement, soda ash, alumina and other related industries. Till 2007, Guangyu Group achieved the development goal with 30 billion yuan of sales revenue and 5 billion yuan of profit and tax, further developing into a group corporation and global corporation in the fierce international competition.
Mr. Feng Guangcheng is leading the new generation of Guangyu, striving and climbing to be the largest enterprise in China building materials industry.