The Pain Of Life And Death Of Wenzhou'S Water Head In China, Where Is The Way Out For Wenzhou?

Today, we continue to focus on manufacturing in China. Although the water head town of Pingyang County in Wenzhou does not raise pigs, it is the largest pig leather processing base in the country. It is called the "China skin capital". The name of the water head town is well deserved. The town of this 100 thousand population has once occupied 1 / 4 of the country's skin. The output value of the city is up to 4 billion yuan a year, and the financial and tax revenue of 1/3 or more in Pingyang county depends on this town. However, when the reporter came to China's leather capital not long ago, the situation was called the National People's disappointment.

"China's leather capital" has become depressed now.

Reporter: * * the water head town of Pingyang, Wenzhou is the largest production base of pig skin leather in China. One of the three pig skin leather products is produced in this place. So there is the title of China Leather City, the South leather city behind me is the largest distributing center for leather in the country, but when I came here, I found that there were no cars coming and going here or there.

In the wholesale market of leather city, the reporter saw almost no business here, although it was time for work, but some of the wholesale outlets were empty. Merchants told reporters that there are few merchants to buy Leather now. Only two years ago, this is known as "China skin capital" water head town, producing 120 million pigs per day, becoming the largest pig leather processing base in the country.

Qiu Yang Jun, Secretary of the Pingyang county Party committee of Wenzhou, said: "at that time, the output value of tannery in the water head reached 40 billion yuan, and the direct tax revenue was 1.69 billion. The tax related to the industry was more than two billion, in fact, it was the main pillar industry of Pingyang at that time."

From the heyday to the present, in a short span of two or three years, the leather production and sales in this town has shrunk dramatically. Many factories are locking the gate at work time. At a main intersection of the base, the reporter saw a large billboard on the roof of an enterprise, which signposted the signs of leather leading enterprises. The plants in the garden contained exquisite bonsai and fountains. In every production building, production slogans for production safety were neatly posted. Everything appeared orderly, but when reporters entered the factory, they were surprised when they saw the scene inside.

Interviewer: "it's found that there is no one in the workshop, and the drum on the left side is full of leather for processing. I counted it. There were 11 drums left idle, and on my right side there was a shelf like this. The shelf should be a long time, because there was a thick layer of dust on it. There was a label on it, and it was made of blue finished leather. Actually, it was already sold for leather, but it is still stacked here."

Reporters at the scene saw that the entire factory covers thousands of square meters, and there are four floors in height. However, there is not a factory worker in the entire factory area. There are scattered leather products on the floor of the factory. The round drum used for leather processing is all idle on the wall. Even the leather processing machines even have no leather products that can be removed. The surface of the equipment is rusty.

In Shui tou Town, there are more than 550 enterprises engaged in leather making, of which 6 are worth more than 100 million yuan. The Baoli leather goods company we saw before is one of them. However, nowadays, there are not a few enterprises in the water head, such as Baoli, which are in a state of shutting down or semi stopping production. The whole water town is also somewhat deserted because of the recession of leather making industry. How did the fur making city that thrive a few years ago become so depressed in a flash?

Let's take a look at our reporter's investigation of another leather enterprise.

The management of Feng Li factory told reporters that the price of live pig pigskin that they bought from this year increased from thirty or forty yuan to eighty yuan, and doubled in one year. However, a well processed pig skin can split into three layers of leather. All the three layers of leather together can sell at most 100 yuan, and the wages of factory workers have increased by nearly 30%. In an office of a factory, the reporter found the Yellow boss of the factory. He said that because there was no business to do now, he would sit here watching TV for most of the day.

Huang Kaifeng, general manager of Wenzhou Pingyang Feng Li Leather Co., Ltd.: "now our leather profits are very low. Like we make leather one foot leather, we earn a quarter of a good price. We only earn one or two yuan for a piece of leather, and only one or two yuan for the cost of 100 yuan."

Huang told reporters that his company had just begun to resume production after a whole industry shutdown. Because of the large number of chemicals used in tanning, the serious pollution of Shui tou town was once listed as the ten largest environmental violation in the country.

Wenzhou Pingyang County deputy magistrate Chen Jingbao: "in the past few years, although you earn a little money, but you earn basically the money of the environment, you basically do not have pollution remediation to improve it, so from the perspective of the government promulgated relevant policies, that is, a drum, cut a drum, we give him a subsidy of thirty thousand yuan, that is, with funds to make up for it, so the whole government took out 1.435 billion to make up for this cut stock pfer, this is appropriate to give them subsidies."

Chen Jingbao, deputy county magistrate of Pingyang County, is also the commander in charge of the local pollution control working group. Chen county chief told reporters that he wanted to minimize the small businesses that did not have the ability to control pollution, and encouraged large enterprises to concentrate production and centralized management, so as to achieve the goal of discharging the standard.

Huang Kaifeng: "I invested about 500000 yuan in every aspect of pollution control."

Feng Li company is a local star enterprise. It is the top star in the production scale and quality. He also hopes that through the industry shuffling, his leather industry can really develop at the local level. Therefore, Huang Kaifeng has not only spent hundreds of millions of yuan to buy small businesses to reduce the drum, but also built professional sewage facilities. After the completion of all the pollution control, Huang Kaifeng's enterprises have ten thousand pig skin production capacity. At the end of last year, he wanted to win more orders when he went to Dongguan to run the order. However, Huang Kai Feng discovered that some of the shoe companies in Dongguan originally had nearly 1/4 of their production and business failures, and the purchases of those enterprises still in production were greatly reduced. Where Huang Kaifeng is

Huang Kaifeng: "at least 1/3 less."

Referring to the Polly leather factory next door, Huang Kaifeng told reporters that the owner of the leather factory was two brothers. Now he bought a medium-sized coal mining right in Shanxi, and has not returned for three or four months. But Huang Kaifeng himself has always wanted to turn to the mining industry. Because of the large investment in coal mine, he has not been able to raise so much cash at present.

Huang Kaifeng: "basically, the money can not be brought out. Now it costs about nine hundred thousand yuan to buy ten thousand pieces of leather. Like our factory, we need two thousand sheets of leather every day, and you have five cars a day."

The boss told reporters that as the output of the shoe making enterprises in the upper reaches dropped by nearly 30%, the demand for leather processing industry also shrank sharply. In addition, the state abolished the export tax rebate for 8% this year, and the annual interest rate of the enterprise loans was raised to 7.47%. The interest rate raising measures will not only affect the banks lending enterprises, but also all foreign trade enterprises should pay the interest of 3-4% to the banks for half a year or three months' credit, while the prices of raw materials and labor also increased by 40%. Only a few of them added, the business cost of the enterprises increased at least by nearly 30%, but because of the shrinking market, the space for their products to raise prices was even 10%.

The chairman of the head Leather Association, though their tannery production was called off last year, is lucky that their factories are producing leather belts besides processing leather. Because of the fact that the belt processing has no sewage, there are no serious impacts on other enterprises in the water head. But even so, the profit margins of the factories are very low. On the operation platform of the factory, the reporters saw workers labelling the price labels for the retailers, many of which were labelling of the large supermarket chains in the United States and Australia, with WAL-MART, K mart and so on. The price tag indicated that the retail price of a belt in the US was about 15 dollars, but on their order sheet, the reporter found that the price of a Chinese belt was surprisingly low. Chen Jie has now taken care of the factory for half a year, and his overseas Chinese leather factory is one of the top companies. His father is the owner of the factory and is also water.

Reporter: "how much is the price that you sell?"

Chen Jie: "8 cents more (US dollars)."

However, even such a low price is no longer competitive with foreign trade.

Chen Jie: "the price we quoted them is too expensive for customers. They are cheaper than India now."

The low profits of the industry have forced the enterprises to turn to other industries. At the beginning of the year, Chen Jie's father took several relatives to inspect the area of Guizhou, Shanxi. It has been nearly six months now. Finally, they negotiated a medium-sized coal mine in Guizhou, which will be bought in the near future.

Chiu director of the leather base management committee of Shui tou town confirmed that the phenomenon of investing in coal mines has been quite common in the locality.

Qiu Dianxing, deputy director of Wenzhou water head leather base management committee, said: "in the whole country, the Wenzhou area is the largest in mining industry. In fact, I know Wenzhou area is the largest number of people who go out to do mine. The water head people go out to do the most mining, and in fact, they are the ones who made leather.

The Wenzhou chamber of Commerce conducted a statistics on their own. The 60% of the small and medium-sized coal mines in Shanxi province are in the hands of Wenzhou people. The annual output of these coal producers is about 20 million tons, accounting for 4.5% of the total annual output of coal in Shanxi and 1% of the whole country. About 30% of them are operated by people in the water town. The main reason for attracting them is the considerable profit from coal mining.

Qiu Dianxing: "if you make leather, you make one hundred million of the output value a year, and this profit is only a few million. If you open coal mines, he may have millions of profits in a month, so this difference is very big."

How can tannery enterprises in the water head town survive the crisis?

The history of leather processing in Shui tou started early in the Southern Song Dynasty, and how many generations of water heads relied on the tannery handicrafts handed down from generation to generation. However, the reporter saw that under the multiple pressures of improving environmental threshold, increasing costs, poor sales, changing foreign trade policies and raising interest rates, many tannery enterprises in the water town have abandoned their old businesses for two years, and have gone to Shanxi to invest in coal mines.

Wenzhou Pingyang Far East leather company general manager Wang Chu: "including Nike, Adidas, and then there are some Wenzhou shoe king, Wenzhou shoes king like AOKANG, Dongyi, Jill Da, the ten domestic shoe king we sell seven or eight, we are in supply."

Wang Chu is the boss of Pingyang Far East leather company. When the company just started, it was like most of the enterprises in the water head town. It produced the blue wet skin without any pattern design and technical processing content. As the fixed customers and large customers gradually occupied the main order of the Far East Company, the products they processed gradually went to the high-grade and high profit leather processing industry.

Wang Chu: "these are deep processing of leather, making this leather all kinds of beautiful colors."

Reporter: "how high is the profit like this?"

Wang Chu: "like these profits should reach 50% to 80% or more, in this leather products, the profits are relatively high."

Interviewer: "what kind of rough skin are those common blue colors?"

Wang Chu: "that's about 10%."

Although they were not severely affected by the shrinkage of the market, due to the unavoidable pollution problem in leather making process, the Far East leather company was completely halted during the period of water head pollution control and other enterprises in the town. Due to the fact that some major customers' long-term orders had not yet been delivered, Wang Chu went to India and Southeast Asian countries to purchase several times. Finally, he thought that the industries such as leather processing needed large area of land, labor force and pollution cost.