The 'small steel shovel' stirs up the 'big market'

The small steel shovel is crafted with excellence, and its characteristic industry sets sail globally. Songdaokou Town in Luannan County is known as the "hometown of Chinese steel shovels", with local steel shovels and garden hardware tools selling well in over 140 countries and regions worldwide.

Entering the production workshop of a local steel shovel enterprise, the fine processes of cutting, dropping, pressing, shot blasting, and spraying are orderly connected. Intelligent equipment such as laser cutting and automated heat treatment robotic arms are widely used in production lines, greatly improving the level of industrial intelligence and precision production. Local enterprises are based on the demand of global segmented markets and timely launch characteristic products that are suitable for different regions and scenarios: developing ultra-low temperature impact resistant snow shovels for polar scientific research environments, creating high-temperature and anti-corrosion shovels that are suitable for the desert climate in the Middle East, and promoting ergonomic gardening shovels that fit European and American consumer habits, promoting the products to climb to the high-end of the industry chain and value chain.

With the steady growth of overseas orders, the risk of product counterfeiting and infringement has also increased, "said Liu Hui, General Manager of Tangshan Comfort Hardware Tools Manufacturing Co., Ltd." Thanks to the guidance of the customs to apply for intellectual property customs protection filing, we have built a security barrier for our independent brand to deeply cultivate the international market

In order to safeguard the achievements of enterprises going global, Tangshan Customs, under the jurisdiction of Shijiazhuang Customs, has actively transformed its regulatory service model, guiding the transformation and upgrading of intellectual property protection for enterprises in its jurisdiction from "passive rights protection" to "active protection", and providing escort for independent brands going global. As of now, a total of 24 private enterprises in the jurisdiction of Tangshan Customs have completed customs protection filing for intellectual property rights, among which enterprises related to Luannan steel shovel products account for 37.5%.

In addition, Tangshan Customs accurately meets the needs of enterprises, conducts customized policy lectures, guides qualified enterprises to handle the registration of outbound bamboo, wood and grass product production and processing enterprises, and guides enterprises to improve their quality control system. In order to facilitate the export channels for enterprises, the customs has established a dedicated liaison post for the steel shovel industry cluster, building a normalized communication bridge between customs and enterprises, and quickly responding to various difficulties faced by enterprises in declaration standards, qualification processing, risk prevention and control. At the same time, relying on digital supervision methods such as video conferencing and electronic certificate "cloud issuance", we break the time and space limitations of traditional on-site inspections, compress the inspection process that originally took several days to tens of minutes, and ensure smooth and convenient customs clearance of steel shovel products for export.

According to statistics, in the first eight months of this year, Tangshan Customs supervised the export of 2847 batches of wooden handled steel shovel products with a total value of 182 million yuan, an increase of 30.5% and 31.9% respectively.

Next, Tangshan Customs will continue to deepen the reform of cross-border trade facilitation, provide precise, modern, and intelligent regulatory services, assist in the transformation and upgrading of county-level characteristic manufacturing industries, fully safeguard the development of "Tangshan Manufacturing" in the global market, and inject customs momentum into the high-quality development of local foreign trade. (Gao Jun Ding Hao)