Hunan Machinery: Global Expansion(August 21)
Sailing Without a Coast: Hunan Construction Machinery Enterprises Continue Expanding Overseas Footprint
From the banks of the Xiang River to the Sahara Desert, from the pinnacle of the Burj Khalifa to World Cup stadiums, the construction machinery army from Hunan has written a story of inland-province enterprises defying the odds to go global, delivering one heavyweight piece of equipment after another.
According to the latest data from Changsha Customs, in the first seven months of this year, Hunan's construction machinery exports reached 24.73 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.2%. Electric excavators, electric wheel loaders, and new energy mining trucks and other green equipment export growth rates significantly led the industry, becoming the new engine of growth.
Leading construction machinery enterprises represented by Zoomlion, SANY, Sunward, CRCHI, and Sinoboom are diversifying their international market development, seeking a second growth curve. As a ballast stone for Hunan's economic stability, the construction machinery cluster's global breakthrough has not only charted a green, intelligent, and internationalized development path but also aligns with Hunan Province's top-level industrial strategy.
Overseas Revenue Exceeds Half, Becoming Core Growth Pillar
In 2025, Zoomlion's overseas revenue reached 30.515 billion yuan, accounting for 58.56% of total revenue, a year-on-year increase of 30.52%. Yang Lelin, deputy general manager of Zoomlion's Smart Aerial Work Company and global marketing center, told China News Service that Zoomlion's business spans over 170 countries and regions, with overseas business achieving a compound annual growth rate of 52% over the past four years.
Yang Lelin stated that global expansion is a long-term development strategy Zoomlion proactively chose and the core driver of sustained growth. He assessed that China's construction machinery currently holds a low global market share, and overseas business will continue to grow rapidly over the next 5 to 10 years.
We rely on three differentiations in overseas markets: product, service, and management, to achieve a premium, with gross margins significantly higher than the domestic market, Yang Lelin revealed. In 2025, Zoomlion's overseas business gross margin was 30.78%, significantly higher than the domestic figure of 24.17%.
Where does the driving force come from? Market segments provide the answer. In 2025, Zoomlion's Africa market grew over 157% year-on-year, with emerging business segments such as earthmoving machinery building a full-scenario product matrix. The Latin American market grew 77%, with annual revenue of 9.672 billion yuan, up 44.99% year-on-year. Additionally, mining machinery overseas revenue grew over 300%, becoming the company's strongest overseas growth engine.
Such robust overseas growth is not unique to Zoomlion among the Hunan construction machinery army. Currently, five Hunan enterprises rank among the global top 50 in construction machinery, and Changsha is the only city worldwide with five leading equipment manufacturers, forming a cluster that jointly develops global markets.
Public data shows that SANY's 2025 international business revenue was 55.86 billion yuan, up 15.1% year-on-year, accounting for 64% of total revenue, covering over 150 countries and regions. Sunward's 2025 overseas market revenue was 4.743 billion yuan, up 7.49% year-on-year, accounting for approximately 64.88% of total revenue. CRCHI's shield tunneling machines have been exported to over 30 countries, with 2025 overseas revenue of 2.941 billion yuan, surging 109.62% year-on-year, raising its share to 29.5%. Sinoboom's aerial work platforms have penetrated high-end European and American rental markets.
Tang Qing, a special researcher at the Chinese Modernization Research Center of the Hunan Academy of Social Sciences, believes that Hunan has deep mechanical industry heritage and has cultivated an irreplaceable engineer culture. Additionally, Hunan entrepreneurs generally possess strong crisis awareness and global vision, having ventured abroad early, choosing to deeply cultivate their core business and sustain high investment in technology research and development, ultimately forming a highly competitive construction machinery cluster effect.
From Early Equipment Export to Full Industry Chain Going Global
In earlier years, Hunan enterprises simply exported main equipment and machinery. Today, Hunan enterprises led by Zoomlion have fundamentally shifted their approach, moving beyond the initial stage of product export and entering a new stage of manufacturing, research and development, services, and talent as a full industry chain going global.
In the past, many enterprises relied on overseas agents, making it difficult for genuine customer needs to reach the enterprise directly. Now we have chosen an end-to-end direct operation model, connecting directly with terminal customers, Yang Lelin emphasized.
Beyond direct operations, a more thorough overseas layout by Hunan enterprises is local manufacturing. Zoomlion's Hungary factory focuses on aerial work platforms, using European local manufacturing to circumvent trade barriers, and the company also has factories in Italy, Germany, Mexico, and other countries. SANY built China's first construction machinery Lighthouse Factory in Indonesia in 2022, and has manufacturing bases in India and the United States. Sunward uses its Belgian European subsidiary headquarters as a hub, building a mature distribution and service network covering all of Europe with over 300 partners, and has clearly stated it will complete overseas production base site selection and begin construction.
If overseas factories and local outlets are the hardware foundation for going global, then full-chain digitalization and intelligence are the software core supporting Hunan construction machinery's global expansion.
Taking Zoomlion as an example, through the Zhongke Yungu national industrial internet platform, it connects over 1.8 million devices worldwide, integrating Beidou and GPS positioning with AI algorithms for real-time condition monitoring and fault early warning, achieving products on the network, data in the cloud, and markets in hand. A multi-language collaborative office system covering over 170 countries allows overseas local employees to input business information in their native language, enabling seamless coordination between global headquarters and regional offices.
In the field of intelligence, Sunward has independently developed the 5G remote operation platform and unmanned operation algorithm, the Sunward Xiangyun platform. This platform deeply integrates the DeepSeek large language model with retrieval-augmented generation technology and digital twin and other frontier technologies, breaking through technical bottlenecks in precise positioning, autonomous obstacle avoidance, and collaborative operation under complex working conditions.
From product export to industry chain export represents the qualitative transformation of Hunan construction machinery from going out to going in, Tang Qing said. This is not merely about building factories, but about the global integration of research and development, production, services, and branding.
Some worry that overseas factory construction might weaken Hunan's local manufacturing. Tang Qing responded that overseas manufacturing and local manufacturing are not a zero-sum game but rather incremental creation. Leading enterprises retain their headquarters, research and development, core components, and high-end manufacturing in Hunan, while overseas operations handle final assembly, services, and localization adaptation. This can actually expand scale through overseas markets, feeding back into domestic research and development and core capabilities, creating more high-value-added positions.
Yang Lelin also stated that Zoomlion's overseas factories primarily target European and American high-end markets, while domestic production bases mainly supply Belt and Road emerging markets. The two tracks are complementary, and there is no situation of capacity gains at one another's expense.
This platform focuses on the import and export of Chinese automotive equipment, gathering hundreds of certified Chinese automotive suppliers and connecting with global buyers. The platform achieves full transaction transparency, expands diverse cooperation opportunities, and helps both domestic and foreign parties build deep and stable cooperation bonds. Whether you are looking for vehicle manufacturers, purchasing automotive parts, or need customized procurement solutions, CNAUTO is your trusted first choice for cooperation.
