Innovation brings business to Yichang plate maker

By Tan Maolin, Yichang International Communication Studio

Yichang GoCham Coated and Galvanized Plate Co., Ltd. has kept busy in the new year with already 720,000 tons worth of orders. The company is able to produce one roll of galvanized plates every 5 minutes.
 

GoCham is benefitting from the increasing demand brought by green development transitions in Yichang as chemical companies need more intermediate bulk containers with galvanized plates, which can be reused during chemical production. Galvanized plates are the key ingredient for making these containers.

"So far this year we have already signed contracts with 30 distributors, and now our three lines are running at full swing to fulfill the orders on time," said Wang Hu, executive vice general manager of GoCham.

In 2015, GoCham was founded and in their initial year achieved an output value of 150 million yuan (US$20.85 million). By 2023, the output value had reached 3.8 billion yuan, a 25-fold leap in eight years.

Galvanized plates are widely used across industries such as construction, automobile, home appliances and light industry. The company’s first breakthrough came in 2018 when its revenue increased to approximately 2.2 billion yuan. The company was able to pass on the price increases  of raw materials to their clients as well as expand their number of production lines, according to Feng Zhouzhou, deputy minister of integrated management in GoCham.
 

In 2019, GoCham invested in R&D to produce galvanized plates used in intermediate bulk containers. Chairman of GoCham Tan Zhiqiang said: “We cooperated with Baosteel on the research. After hundreds of experiments for nearly three years, we finally found the solution for the optimal utilization rate of materials in these containers."

Due to the advantages of stretch-ability, corrosion resistance and lower cost, the new galvanized plates for intermediate bulk containers were well received as soon as they were introduced to the market in 2023. Now, GoCham holds one-third of the domestic market share for galvanized plates for intermediate bulk containers.

“This year, we’ll invest 170 million yuan more to upgrade the original production lines, and the production capacity will be increased to 1 million tons from the present 700,000 tons,” said Tan.