Stepping into the workshop of Qingdao Elite Machinery Manufacture Co.,Ltd., located in Jimo District, Qingdao City, one is greeted by a bustling production scene. Thirteen production lines operate smoothly, with robotic arms precisely gripping raw materials to complete drilling, tapping, and other processes.
Elite Machinery utilizes advanced testing equipment such as coordinate measuring machines, optical imaging systems, and integrated profile and roughness testers to verify valve dimensions with micron-level precision. Its angle seat valves, diaphragm valves, and other products, manufactured through more than 90 processes, are widely used in fields such as healthcare, new energy, and nuclear industry. As a high-quality valve manufacturer, Jingrui Machinery has earned numerous accolades, including National High-tech Enterprise, Specialized and Innovative "Little Giant" Enterprise, and Shandong Gazelle Enterprise, thanks to its meticulous manufacturing. Holding over 100 patents, it has become an influential valve manufacturer in China.
Craftsmanship builds the foundation
Zhang Wenli, founder of Elite Machinery, previously worked for a company under the Qingdao Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Bureau. An experience connecting a Danish client with domestic stainless steel ball valve suppliers solidified her determination to improve the quality of Chinese valve products.
“The batch delivered was clearly different from the samples; the valves could be cracked by hand. Is this what Chinese products are like?” The Danish client slammed his fist on the table in anger. This scene deeply affected Zhang Wenli.
“We must manufacture Chinese valves that satisfy our customers.” With this painful lesson learned, Zhang Wenli founded Jingrui Machinery in 2001. Although it started in a small workshop with rudimentary equipment and few staff, using high-quality materials was a discipline Zhang Wenli set for herself. While some companies used cast iron to reduce costs, Jingrui Machinery insisted on using 304 stainless steel; while some companies omitted material testing, Jingrui Machinery introduced advanced material testing equipment such as spectrometers and universal testing machines, solely to ensure product quality. With high-quality products and a down-to-earth approach, the company successfully launched its first angle seat valve a year later.
“Although our product quality was comparable to similar foreign products and our prices were slightly lower, many domestic companies at the time still used imported valves, and our products were ignored.” To open up the market, considering the inconvenience of imported valves such as long maintenance periods and high costs, Zhang Wenli promised customers that any valves that malfunctioned could be replaced with new ones. In this way, relying on excellent after-sales service, the company gradually won the favor of customers.
Elite Machinery's dual-engine approach of “quality + service” enabled its angle seat valves to eventually gain recognition from many large manufacturers. In 2005, the company registered the ESG trademark, officially embarking on the path of developing its own brand. Jingrui Machinery transformed from a small OEM factory into an industry “hidden champion.”
While most companies were still pursuing a “large and comprehensive” product range, Jingrui Machinery focused on the high-end fluid control market, selling its products to more than 80 countries and regions.
Brain empowerment
In the showroom of Elite Machinery, a reporter observed an intelligent regulating valve operating stably in a fluid model. Staff simply input the target command into the system control panel, and temperature and pressure sensors on the fluid pipeline continuously transmit digital electrical signals to the intelligent regulator. Soon, the intelligent regulator drives the actuator to automatically adjust the valve opening, precisely controlling the liquid flow to achieve the manually set target value.
"This is an application scenario of our intelligent regulating valve in the industrial field. Its key difference from traditional valves is its ability to 'think' independently. Regardless of the current operating status, as long as you input a command, it will judge and adjust based on its own understanding to achieve the desired value," said Lü Yongxing, manager of the electrical control group at Jingrui Machinery.
Equipping industrial valves with a "brain" represents Jingrui Machinery's transformation from "manufacturing" to "intelligent manufacturing," and is also an effective attempt by the company to invest in R&D to solve customer pain points and difficulties.
In 2016, a customer in the printing and dyeing industry raised a problem encountered in production: "The color difference between different batches of fabric is always excessive. Can we precisely control the amount of dye added to reduce the color difference?"
It turned out that traditional valves were mainly adjusted manually, which not only resulted in a high error rate but also significantly increased production costs. Intelligent development was an inevitable trend, and the company decided to equip the valves with a "smart brain" to improve product accuracy.
Lu Yongxing recalled, "The biggest challenge in developing the intelligent regulating valve was the stability of the regulator algorithm."
"Because there were no domestic examples of intelligent valves, we could only refer to imported products, and the core control system had to be developed in-house." Therefore, Lu Yongxing led his team to disassemble more than 30 kinds of high-frequency solenoid valves from both domestic and foreign sources. After hundreds of tests, they selected a high-frequency solenoid valve with a response frequency of up to 50 Hz as the core actuator of the regulating positioner. After eight months and hundreds of algorithm iterations, they finally developed a dynamic compensation algorithm with pressure compensation, pulse width modulation, and PID control, achieving a control accuracy of 0.1%, a leading international level of "the error of only one drop out of a thousand drops of liquid." After a year of testing, the intelligent valve was officially launched on the market in 2018. Currently, it boasts over a thousand specifications across nine series, is exported to 66 countries and regions, and has applied for 37 national patents, reaching international advanced levels.
"Our research and development will continue, constantly updating and iterating," said Lü Yongxing. He explained that the intelligent valve has undergone over a hundred upgrades, from the basic version to the fully automatic version. "We have established a special team to accelerate the development of supporting equipment related to fluid control, such as solenoid valves and sensors, to further improve the reliability of the intelligent valve."
Overcoming difficulties
Industrial valves are widely used across various industries. With technological advancements, many industries face new pain points. In response, Jingrui Machinery has shifted its focus to continuously tackling new key technologies.
In 2022, a request for help from a well-known domestic company revealed a technological dilemma in the new energy field: its lithium battery electrolyte filling system used pinch valves from a foreign brand. The valve sleeves were easily corroded by electrolyte crystals, leading to incomplete valve closure and electrolyte leakage, requiring cleaning, repair, and replacement every three months. This became a major obstacle to the efficient and low-cost assembly of lithium batteries.
To address this critical issue, Jingrui Machinery immediately deployed its R&D team to the front lines of lithium battery production. They conducted a systematic analysis and comparison of existing electrolyte filling control technologies both domestically and internationally, discovering numerous problems with the traditional pinch valve design. These included materials not being resistant to electrolyte corrosion and an unreasonable sealing structure, making them highly susceptible to electrolyte residue crystallization and subsequent valve leakage.
To address this, the R&D team developed a brand-new straight-through diaphragm valve. The straight flow path improves the valve's flow coefficient, and combined with special channel polishing technology, it reduces electrolyte adhesion and prevents crystallization. A special sealing structure was also designed to improve the valve's sealing performance and lifespan, solving the problems of low flow coefficients, excessive crystallization, and short lifespan in existing electrolyte filling valves.
"Our solution to the sealing problem mainly adopted a non-metallic-metal sealing method," said Jiang Hua, R&D Manager at Jingrui Machinery. "Regarding the issue of the sealing diaphragm being easily corroded, we also conducted electrolyte immersion experiments on various materials, selecting modified polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) with good corrosion resistance to electrolytes as the diaphragm material. In addition, for the valve channel and sealing structure design, we used a combination of finite element analysis and experiments to shorten the verification cycle, and a series of problems were solved one by one."
After completing the diaphragm valve model design, the R&D team conducted sealing performance tests, electrolyte corrosion tests, strength tests, and fatigue tests to test its performance. The test results showed that the diaphragm valve's service life can reach over one million cycles, reducing costs for customers by over 400%. With its stable injection volume and safe operation, diaphragm valves are widely used in new energy lithium battery electrolyte filling companies, gradually replacing foreign valves.
As the company continues to grow and expand, its strong market competitiveness has attracted the attention of foreign companies. In 2020, a foreign valve company proposed a multi-million yuan acquisition plan, promising to incorporate Jingrui Machinery into its global supply chain. Zhang Wenli decisively refused: "If the company is sold, China's valve industry will lose a game-changer." She not only did not rest on her laurels but also continued to lead her team to expand into fields such as nuclear industry and aerospace.
In 2024, Jingrui Machinery's new plant, Qingdao Yisi Global Fluid Control Co., Ltd., went into operation, gradually achieving an annual production capacity of 10 million sets of intelligent valves, with an annual output value of 1 billion yuan; in 2025, Jingrui Machinery's old plant added three automated casting lines, with an annual production capacity of 2,400 tons.
"The industrial valve market is huge, but currently, more than one-third of the domestic market is occupied by foreign companies, and most high-end products still rely on imports," said Zhang Wenli. "In the future, companies need to continue to focus on high-pressure, high-frequency, and high-precision valves, making 'Made in China' a global standard-setter in fluid control."
(Economic Daily reporter Liu Cheng)
