On March 29, 2024, PKU Pioneer's 2023 annual work summary conference was successfully held, with the spring approaching. The management led all the staff to retrospect the challenges encountered and achievements made and thoroughly summed up the gains and losses in the past year, thereby laying the direction and gathering strength to actively achieve the business goals in 2024.
2023 is a year full of challenges and opportunities for PKU Pioneer. In the face of global economic instability and increasingly fierce market competition, PKU Pioneer's main business, vacuum pressure swing adsorption (VPSA) and pressure swing adsorption (PSA) gas separation, once again achieved impressive results. With sales revenue of nearly $104 million, up 17% year-on-year, PKU Pioneer achieved solid growth throughout the year.
This achievement is mainly attributed to PKU Pioneer's years of deep cultivation in the VPSA and PSA industry. With outstanding engineering performance, solid engineering technologies, and a professional brand image, we've gained the trust of both new and old customers, established a good reputation, and formed a relatively stable client base. According to statistics, 80% of PKU Pioneer's annual performance comes from regular customers. Achieving multiple repeat orders and strategic cooperation projects from regular clients helped to successfully fulfill the annual sales objective. It is noteworthy that, based on the performance of PKU Pioneer in the past 5 years, the orders brought in by the regular users obviously constitutes a significant portion of the total performance. PKU Pioneer's business model, which integrates products, technologies, and services, has attracted a group of highly loyal users, prompting them to continuously and repeatedly choose to reach efficient cooperation with PKU Pioneer.
In 2023, with remarkable results achieved, PKU Pioneer realized new breakthroughs in overseas market development. In the VPSA oxygen generation business, export records were repeatedly broken and 3 Belt and Road Initiative countries were opened up. Throughout the year, 9 VPSA and PSA oxygen production plants were constructed in 6 countries, with a total oxygen production capacity of approximately 80,000Nm3/h, applied in fields such as non-ferrous metallurgy, chemical and steel industry. With the significant decline in the price of raw material lithium carbonate, compared to other processes, the advantages of VPSA and PSA oxygen-generating technology, such as high cost-effectiveness and substantial return on investment, have become more prominent, further expanding its competitive strengths in the international market. In 2023, emerging market economies maintained a relatively rapid pace of economic growth, the Middle East countries are becoming more active in the global market. A syngas separation project of PKU Pioneer is about to be implemented and constructed in the region, which is PKU Pioneer’s first syngas project that truly goes abroad since its establishment, representing a milestone. In the complex and ever-changing international situation, PKU Pioneer seizes market opportunities, continuously optimizes products and solutions to better meet the needs of overseas customers and enhances the technical service level of overseas projects to promote the construction of overseas customer service systems.
While achieving steady growth in performance, PKU Pioneer is also striving to promote the standardization of project implementation and management and fully enforce project quality control. In 2023, PKU Pioneer's leaders adopted a suggestion from employees and updated the slogan “quality projects as our common goal and customers' satisfaction as the common pursuit” on the wall of the engineering department's meeting room, which embeds the corporate culture of “customers' satisfaction” in every aspect of our daily work and continuously strengthens the service concept of putting the clients first.
In his conference report, General Manager Tang Wei mentioned that over the past year, PKU Pioneer has implemented over 100 engineering projects, with approximately 40 projects successfully completed and accepted. The users gave full recognition to PKU Pioneer's technical team for their diligence and dedication in ensuring the successful and smooth operation of engineering projects. Many clients from industries such as steel, non-ferrous metals, and solid waste have sent thank-you banners and commendation letters to PKU Pioneer. The project teams take pride in receiving high praise from the users. Under the impetus of a series of incentive measures, the competition for the Annual Quality Engineering Project Award has become increasingly fierce, with each player catching up with the other.
In R&D innovation, PKU Pioneer continued to make efforts in the main business, carried out feasibility studies related to adsorbents and catalysts, and implemented more than 10 research and development projects. PKU Pioneer cooperated with Tianjin University to apply for the Technology and Engineering Application of Industrial Exhaust Gas Resource Utilization to Produce Bulk Oxygen-Containing Chemicals, in February 2023, PKU Pioneer won the first prize of the Industry-University-Research Cooperation Innovation Award issued by China Industry-University-Research Institute Collaboration Association (CIUR), marking another provincial and ministerial-level award PKU Pioneer has obtained in the field. PKU Pioneer's exclusive PSA-CO purification technology pioneered the separation and purification of high-purity CO from raw coke oven gas to synthesize ethylene glycol. It is another typical case of industry-university-research collaboration promoting the transformation of scientific and technological achievements.
Looking back on 2023, PKU Pioneer achieved commendable results in business development, technological & management innovation, and team building, thanks to its comprehensive development strategies and optimized resource allocation. This is the result of the joint efforts of all employees. The start of 2024 is promising, although the national economy seems to have achieved a “good start”, market reactions are mixed. Moreover, with increased global political and economic uncertainties and ongoing geopolitical conflicts, combined with other various unfavorable factors, there is a certain pressure on the development of the main gas separation business and the exploration of new ones in the environmental protection field, Nevertheless, PKU Pioneer remains confident in finding opportunities amid challenges and chooses to rise to the difficulties. Years of market tests have forged the resilience of PKU Pioneer to be unafraid of the harsh market conditions and unyielding in industry competition.
Looking ahead, PKU Pioneer will continue to improve its core competitiveness, focus on long-term layout, optimize cost control, innovate products and technologies, and return professional, honest, high-quality and efficient services to our customers.
