Author: Dave Hull, founder and president of PRECISION COMPONENTS, INC
If you are buying Chinese Bearings, You should read this!
I wasn’t around when Leonardo da Vinci sketched the first ball bearing in the 1500s, or even when Germany developed the first high production bearing factories in the 1940s, however, my short 40 years of experience in the bearing industry has taught me a few things, much of which is beneficial to anyone buying bearings, and particularly, Chinese bearings.
In the late 1940s and 50s, bearing manufacturing in the U.S. took off, with a proliferation of many small bearing companies ranging from divisions of General Motors to the Timken Bearing Company and hundreds of others. Growing up in Connecticut, there were dozens in Connecticut alone. But over time, the number of bearing producers in the U.S. began to shrink. Through consolidation, agglomeration and migration from Europe and Japan, only a few very large players now dominate the U.S. and world market.
It was in the 1960s when the Japanese bearing producers started expanding into the North American market, led by a small number of now well-known names in the industry from the multitude of companies making bearings in Japan at that time. While the rest of the world had gone through a massive consolidation process, it wasn’t until the mid-1980s that China’s policy towards privately owned enterprise changed. The Chinese Government identified the bearing industry, and targeted that market by using their resources in an effort to make China a world-class bearing producer. This resulted in thousands of small bearing companies being started and over time the restructure of many of the large state owned companies.
I started selling bearings from China in 1990 and began working directly with China in 1996. By this time the Chinese Government was well on their way to establishing China as a world-class bearing producer. The government had set up bearing industry standards, most of which were patterned after ISO and ABMA standards. Government run research and test facilities spread around China to help producers make quality product. For comparison, in the early 1990s the product I was selling from China was good for luggage wheels, roller skates, and low speed conveyers, but by the late 1990s, electric motor quality bearings were available for medium speed applications like power tools, vacuum cleaner motors, and other consumer products. These thousands of small bearing companies that were born are now just starting the evolutionary cycle, which has already transformed the US, European, and Japanese bearing industries.
I have personally made over 500 visits to Chinese bearing factories over the past 22 years and it is astonishing to me how far China has come from replacing non precision bearings with precision bearings, to making machine tool spindle aircraft quality products. In my earlier years, I was not surprised to visit factories that had dirt floors and conditions that would give an OSHA inspector a heart attack. In recent years, I have visited state of the art manufacturing facilities with real time data collection of ground raceway dimensions automatically fed into a computer with instantly updated manufacturing statistics of every single piece that is ground. Some factories have become fully automated, without a single person touching the finished parts.
The world bearing industry is dominated by multibillion-dollar multinational bearing producers. China on the other hand is dominated by thousands of bearing producers, all ranging in their capabilities. To give you perspective, there are over 2,000 producers in Jiangsu Province alone. It’s not unlikely for one company or purchasing department to be burned by one or even several Chinese companies before becoming completely turned off by all other Chinese product. When I explain this to my clients, my favorite example is a statement made by my international trade attorney: “99% of lawyers give the rest of us a bad name.” Which, unfortunately, is also a great statement when replacing the word ‘lawyers’ with ‘Chinese bearing companies.’ There are world-class producers in China, but the key is finding them.
Size also doesn’t dictate capability. I have visited companies in the $50 million range that only produce a handful of sizes. Some others that only make 608 ball bearings, no other sizes. Also, the bigger bearing companies will generally quote everything on your list of requirements. You need to figure out which ones they make in house and which ones they outsource as well as the consistency of their outsourcing.
China’s come a long way since the 1990s, but still today there are many bearing companies in China that do not understand the mindset of a potential U.S. customer. They assume everyone wants the least expensive product available and so they start out cheap and when the parts do not pass they expect another chance.
Having spent almost 4 months of my life on a plane, and 3 years of compiled time living in China devoting my life to this industry, my recommendations have afforded me a career worth of knowledge that cannot be confined to this article. However, in order to provide some direction, anyone buying bearings should at least adhere to the following when buying from China.
The key to success is identifying your needs and goals. Evaluate the types of bearings you need. Separate size range, preferably by machine size and volume requirements. Prioritize these groups. Evaluate the dollar potential to see if Chinese bearing companies might be interested, and determine your expectations for savings. Remember, China operates in a mass production mindset. Going to China for small specialized sizes is most likely not in your best interest. This will help make the project feasible. And overall, you must visit the factory. If you don’t travel to China, you are wasting your time. Finally, don’t get discouraged. My original business model, which currently includes two full time offices in Shanghai and Beijing, was to help small to medium size companies save money in China. I believed smaller companies who could not afford the expense of opening offices in China would find benefit from our offered services. Contrary to my original belief, I have spent the majority of my career servicing the needs of Fortune 500 companies who had teams of representatives in China on countless occasions and still came up empty handed. The companies that have succeeded in finding reliable Chinese partners more often than not saved millions of dollars.
The rest of the world has consolidated, however, China is still evolving. If you can navigate your way through the sea of endless suppliers, you will succeed. And if you still don’t believe in Chinese bearings, just remember, unless you haven’t traveled in the last 5 years, you have likely flown on an airplane, ridden in a car, truck, or train with Chinese bearings supporting the most critical components of that vehicle.
Dave Hull is the founder and president of PRECISION COMPONENTS, INC, which for the last 27 years has provided engineered metal products and services to major manufacturers. For information on Mr. Hull, you can read his BIO on www.pcomponents.com.
Facts and Figures are based on research performed by Precision Components Asia
The famous brand original bearings (SKF, FAG, TIMKEN ,NSK etc...)
If you need to import original brand bearings from China, you could find many authorized distributors (more than 300)in China, the only problem is the price.(Bearing price + Tax). To be honest, over 60 customers had asked about the original brand bearing prices, only one had ever bought a small quantity from me, all about the prices. Maybe it’s better to purchase original bearings from the authorized distributors in your own country. I’ve never bought original SKF bearings except China, it’s just my advice, welcome to compare prices:)).
So are there any SKF or other famous brand bearing factories in China? Yes, a lot. SKF has over 100 factories over the world, 18 of them are in China. NSK has about 63 factories worldwide, 12 of them are in China. Timken owns about 52 factories, 8 of them in China.(You could find these information on their official websites). For these bearing factories,their bearings are not all directly supply Chinese market, they will send to the other countries according to their head office redeployment .But all the bearings are “ORIGINAL” bearings, they are produced based on the same standard. You don’t have to worry about the quality.
Bearings Made in China
The best solution to choose a supplier is from the Fairs, and the best bearing fair in China in my opinion is China International Bearing Industry Expo in Shanghai.Their prices may higher but quality is guaranteed.
The second way is to find a small factory or trader to help you find all the bearings you need with good prices and quality. It requires luck and time. The person is important.
Here are some information about Chinese bearing industry accumulation areas:There are several bearing industry zones in China, such as Linqing, Wafangdian, Cixi, Changzhou etc.Linqing is the comprehensive bearing manufacture area, the other cities or towns are specializing in one or several types of bearings. Wafangdian specializing in big size bearings such as spherical roller bearings, famous brand:ZWZ. Cixi focus on miniature bearings like skateboard bearings, famous brand: HCH. Changzhou is mainly manufacturing needle roller bearings,famous brand:NRB.
Basically you could find all types of bearings in Linqing city, some are manufactures, some are distributors or dealers.If you are confident in your acknowledge about bearing supply chain in China, you could just visit the factory that you need, negotiate with factory owners and get the best prices. However, it does not mean that you will get the best prices even you finally find the factory yourself, the prices for distributors and foreign customers are different. The factory owners will keep a balance between their dealers and foreign customers. In most cases, the dealers or the trading company could get better prices than foreign customers, so that they could survive in this saturated market.
If you care about the prices very much, and at the same time the quality should be good. Then you’ll have the opportunities to meet frauds and cheaters, i don’t want to admit it but there actually are. Price and quality question is an eternal contradiction. There are so many ways to save money in bearing manufacturing, all these little tricks you could not see through your eyes. Many of my customers told me that they have rich experience souring in Chinese bearing market, but in my opinion, you will never see the production details if we don’t want you to see. For me, reliable suppliers are more important than customers.
The last part I’m gonna tell you some misunderstandings about bearings.
1.I used to think that all my customers know it, but actually just few of them had ever seen a realistic bearing production process.Maybe you have ever asked your suppliers about their main products, they will tell you that our factory could manufacture deep groove ball bearings, tapered roller bearings and some mounted bearings also. Will you immediately figure out that this factory is just an assembling factory ? One full-automation bearing production line could only manufacture one type or types in a small range, it usually depends on the outer ring dimension,we need to spend about at least 150,000 dollars to buy an full-automation production line. So 99% of the factories could not “manufacture”(not assemble) roller bearings and ball bearings at the same time. As we all know, SKF manufactures everything related with bearings, but every single factory of SKF make just a few types of bearings. For example, SKF Jinan factory, they only manufacture tapered roller bearings for cars and trucks.
So if you have a big range of bearing requirements, i’m afraid it’s very hard to gather all of the original factories and ensure that all factories finish orders well. That’s how we survive in this market ,we solve problems for you, we have our own factory and at the same time, we could use experience and our good relationship with other manufacturers to help you finish your orders with reasonable prices and good quality.
2.There are good quality bearings in China. As the data that i showed above, all the famous bearing brand set their factories in China, the important thing to judge the bearing quality is not to see if it’s Made in China or P.R.C, it’s the STANDARD. SKF factories in China use the same quality standard with the factories in Sweden. The difference is many small Chinese bearing factories are still manufacturing low quality bearings, we provide bearings based on our orders. SKF only produces best quality bearings and no need orders for low-end market. According to the data from Chinese Bearing Association, 70% of our export bearings are facing low-end market. China could not manufacture bearings for High-Speed(Bullet) Trains, for big jets, but for most of the bearing application market, customers use many of our bearings and they are working well. We will never stop improving our bearing technology, creating value for our customers.