From off­shore wind power and new energy vehicles to aerospace and shield tun­nel­ing machines, high-end bear­ings by Luoy­ang Bear­ing Group are repla­cing impor­ted products in sec­tors once dom­in­ated by inter­na­tional man­u­fac­tur­ers.

Accord­ing to the China Bear­ing Industry Asso­ci­ation, LYC has an irre­place­able role in the indus­tri­al­iz­a­tion and self-sup­ply of high-end equip­ment and major products in China. The com­pany's rise mir­rors the broader trans­form­a­tion under­way across Cent­ral China's Henan province, where innov­a­tion-driven man­u­fac­tur­ing and expand­ing global con­nectiv­ity are reshap­ing one of China's indus­trial heart­lands.

One of LYC's most not­able achieve­ments lies in wind power bear­ings. In the late 1990s, China's wind tur­bine bear­ings were heav­ily depend­ent on for­eign sup­pli­ers. Today, LYC has emerged as a global leader in the sec­tor.

Accord­ing to Dong Hanjie, assist­ant gen­eral man­ager of LYC, its break­through came with the devel­op­ment of 16-mega­watt off­shore wind tur­bine main shaft bear­ings, regarded as a land­mark achieve­ment in China's wind power equip­ment industry. The product has been installed in the world's first mass-pro­duced 16-MW off­shore wind tur­bine plat­form and has with­stood mul­tiple typhoons dur­ing oper­a­tion.

"When it comes to the man­u­fac­tur­ing of main shaft bear­ings for 16-MW off­shore wind tur­bines, we have gone from play­ing catch-up to keep­ing pace with the global lead­ers, and are now lead­ing the way," said Dong.

Accord­ing to the com­pany, LYC now holds one of the world’s largest mar­ket shares in wind tur­bine main bear­ings, while the mar­ket share of tra­di­tional for­eign man­u­fac­tur­ers in China has stead­ily declined.

The com­pany has also made rapid advances in the boom­ing new energy vehicle sec­tor. Its wheel hub bear­ings are used in vehicles pro­duced by lead­ing Chinese auto­makers.

Inside its intel­li­gent man­u­fac­tur­ing work­shops, fully auto­mated pro­duc­tion lines can com­plete a wheel hub bear­ing every 15 seconds, while digital inspec­tion sys­tems con­duct real-time mon­it­or­ing throughout the man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cess. Work­ers on the pro­duc­tion floor are now primar­ily respons­ible for equip­ment main­ten­ance and sys­tem man­age­ment rather than tra­di­tional manual oper­a­tions, reflect­ing the com­pany's trans­ition to intel­li­gent man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Dong said that engin­eers at LYC over­came key tech­nical chal­lenges involving low-fric­tion torque and high-seal­ing per­form­ance. These are two crit­ical but often con­flict­ing require­ments for improv­ing vehicle energy effi­ciency and dur­ab­il­ity. The tech­no­lo­gical break­through helped the com­pany quickly gain mar­ket recog­ni­tion from domestic auto­makers includ­ing BYD.

In the Zheng­zhou Air­port Eco­nomy Zone, or ZAEZ, just over 100 kilo­met­ers from Luoy­ang, BYD's massive pro­duc­tion base has become another example of Henan's man­u­fac­tur­ing upgrade. Rows of newly assembled elec­tric vehicles con­tinu­ously roll off pro­duc­tion lines before being trans­por­ted via the China-Europe freight train ser­vice, sea and high­ways to over­seas mar­kets includ­ing Cent­ral Asia.

The rapid rise of the Auto­mobile City in the ZAEZ high­lights Henan's role in China's new energy vehicle sup­ply chain. Sup­por­ted by an increas­ingly com­plete indus­trial eco­sys­tem cov­er­ing bat­ter­ies, auto parts, logist­ics and smart man­u­fac­tur­ing, the province is accel­er­at­ing the form­a­tion of advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing clusters.

Henan's stra­tegic loc­a­tion at the inter­sec­tion of sev­eral major trans­port cor­ridors has also strengthened its role as a national logist­ics hub. The ZAEZ's new energy vehicle export dis­tri­bu­tion cen­ter adopts ded­ic­ated chan­nels, China-Europe Rail­way Express ser­vices and onestop cus­toms clear­ance. It has shortened the export lead time of com­plete BYD vehicles to Europe to 12 days, a cut of over 40 per­cent.

From high-end bear­ings to elec­tric vehicles, Henan is stead­ily build­ing a more innov­a­tion-driven indus­trial struc­ture. Offi­cial data show the province's indus­trial eco­nomy has main­tained steady growth momentum in recent years, with advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing and stra­tegic emer­ging indus­tries becom­ing key growth drivers.

In 2025, the province's indus­trial value added from enter­prises above des­ig­nated size grew by 8.4 per­cent year-on-year.

The province has also intens­i­fied efforts to build smart factor­ies, digital work­shops and green man­u­fac­tur­ing sys­tems. Enter­prises are increas­ingly integ­rat­ing indus­trial inter­net plat­forms, big data and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence tech­no­lo­gies into pro­duc­tion pro­cesses to improve effi­ciency and reduce energy con­sump­tion.

Products man­u­fac­tured in Henan are now reach­ing global mar­kets through a grow­ing net­work of open plat­forms, includ­ing Zheng­zhou Xin­zheng Inter­na­tional Air­port, bon­ded zones and cross-bor­der e-com­merce chan­nels.

From giant bear­ings sup­port­ing off­shore wind tur­bines to smart factor­ies pro­du­cing next-gen­er­a­tion elec­tric vehicles, Henan's indus­trial trans­form­a­tion offers a vivid illus­tra­tion of how China's inland provinces are mov­ing from tra­di­tional man­u­fac­tur­ing toward innov­a­tion-led, glob­ally con­nec­ted devel­op­ment.

Web editors: Shen Jianqi, Tong Lin