Dear foundry directors and colleagues,

----In the bright and blossom spring, we come together to discuss the future of China’s foundry industry. I wish great success to the 7th National Congress of Foundry Directors. I will share my views with all of you and hope there will be more constructive and unique views.

----China’s economy has achieved world-noted success since the reform and opening-up, especially during the last 10th Five Year Plan period. However, the development is at the expense of high energy and resources consumption and heavy pollution. It is not possible to sustain this kind of rough mode economy increase in future. Currently, China is called world plant, but most products are of lower-value-added and at the lower end. The core technologies and key components and parts are heavily dependent on import. Although China’s annual production of casting has ranked first continuously for five years in the world, but the income of 2005 is just less than that of United States and Japan and the price per ton of exported castings is just 1/3 of that of the imported castings. The status of China’s foundry is still backward with old machines, lack of technology, bad working condition, high energy and resources consumption and heavy pollution. Therefore, we have to implement the Scientific Development Concept and facilitate the innovation to establish energy and resources saving and environment-friendly foundry industry. I think we should make efforts in the following aspects:

1. To communicate with the central and local governments and get their attentions on the development of foundry industry. The central government should make future roadmap of foundry industry and the local governments of foundry-populated regions should make their own roadmaps as well.
2. To restructure foundry enterprises and encourage the forming of well-run big groups. There are 26,000 foundries in China. Most of them are small-scaled. The annual production per foundry is just 800 tons in 2004, just 1/8-1/4 of the developed countries. The reasonable production for iron and steel foundries should be about 3,900 tons per year, while for nonferrous alloys should be around 1,000 tons. Then, firstly, the admittance system should be introduced to foundry industry to set the basic requirements and standards. And the backward foundries should be helped to reach the standards, too. Secondly, to facilitate the specialized foundry production. Thirdly, to encourage of merging and restructuring of foundry enterprises to form some big groups with high competence. Fourthly, to establish some local service centers in foundry-populated areas for quality inspection, tooling, supplying of raw and ancillary materials.
3. To encourage, fund and foster the enterprise innovation by the combination mechanism of research-education-production. Firstly, research centers should be established in big commercial foundry companies. Secondly, to organize university/institution-industry consortiums to do research to solve some key technological problems. Thirdly, to establish local service centers for the foundry-populated area. Fourthly, to establish the database of foundry experts for better service of consulting, quality diagnosis and technical service. Fifthly, to strengthen the protection of intellectual properties. Train foundry workers the knowledge about the intellectual properties and their protection. And encourage the application of patent to protect the innovation, for example, Chevy Automobile Company makes great efforts for patent application and has made significant progress.
4. To lower the consumption of energy and resources and strengthen the environmental protection and working safety protection. Take iron castings as an example, 85% of the total melting iron, 22millions tons totally per year, is melt by old fashioned cupolas. The energy consumption per ton iron castings in the well-run foundry Co. Ltd of First Auto Works is 459 tons standard coal, two times or more than that of developed countries. The waste gas of CO2, CO and SO2 charged per year reaches 16.5 billion cubic meters, dust 0.9 million tons, 1.8-2.2 million tons of waste sand and 5.3 million tons of dregs. Therefore, the China Foundry Association should do some statistics work about the energy consumption and the pollution. And we should also propose the energy saving objective in accordance to the 11th Five Year Plan. I think it is definitely possible to cut off 20%. Take opportunities such as conference, exhibition and seminars to let the foundrymen know the state of art equipments, technologies, new materials and promote the exchange of experiences for further energy and resources saving. To strengthen the recycle and reuse of all kinds of casting materials. To get the fund from the government to set example foundries of energy and resources saving, which then take the leadership of foundry industry into the track of energy and resources saving.
5. To strengthen the training and instruction of professional foundrymen including technicians, workers and managers for the improvement of quality of human resources. The bad working condition results in the loss of foundry technicians and workers. And now lots of farmers work at the production site. And the universities and colleges have cancelled the major of foundry for several years. Therefore, we should call the Ministry of Education to permit the resume of the major of foundry and the enrollment of undergraduates in several universities. Meanwhile, the training materials should be prepared and published. The China Foundry Association should further improve the quality of Foundry Panorama and Foundry Technology and their websites. By using these two journals and their websites to introduce new technologies and promote the technical exchange.

Thanks.