Widespread Impact

The impact of China's global shopping spree is being felt even in tiny Poca, WV, population 1,024.  At Kanawha Scales & Systems, Chinese orders for the company's sophisticated coal-loading machines have grown to about one-third of the company's roughly $50 million in annual revenue.

"The last three or four years, it's increased substantially.  A lot," says Jim Bradbury, president of KSS.

Bradbury, 61, made his first trip to China in 1986, spending a month in Beijing in a fruitless quest for an order.  Six years later, the company finally landed its first deal, a $3 million contract to install coal loadout systems at a Chinese coal mine.

These steel structures, rising 100 feet in the air, straddle rail lines that lead from the mines.  Conveyor belts feed a steady stream of coal into the KSS machine, which weighs the material before depositing it in coal trains that inch past beneath the tower.

KSS has succeeded in China despite the hurdle of the country's currency, which most economists say is substantially undervalued. That makes foreign products more expensive for Chinese customers.

The KSS coal-loading systems, for example, are far more expensive than their Chinese-made competitors, perhaps twice as costly in Chinese currency, says Yuwen Yao, the company's Chinese-born director of international sales and business development.

"At the beginning, it was very difficult to convince customers that advanced technology was needed.  Money was a big issue, too," Yao says.

KSS has been sucessful by promoting its advanced technology, including fully automated rail car loading, and sophisticated monitoring, and higher quality and reliability, Bradbury says.

Now, the company hopes to expand into other industrial sectors, including seaports and cement producers.  By 2010, China revenue could reach about $30 million, Yao says.

"Even though it's difficult, we like doing business there," Bradbury says.