Breaking Ground: Hunan Chuangyuan's Quest for Innovation in China's Mining Industry
In the world of achievements, nothing remarkable is achieved without perseverance and innovation.
"Innovation leads to success, and quality ensures victory" - this is the slogan of Hunan Chuangyuan. For Wang Yi, innovation is the essence of maintaining the vitality of the company, while top-notch product quality and services are the keys to corporate success.
In 2015, after three years of preparation, Hunan Chuangyuan launched its first mining equipment product - the mobile shaft drilling rig. This rig, with its compact structure, flexible mobility, suitability for all rock types, green efficiency, and intelligent safety features, filled the gap in intelligent underground vertical engineering construction equipment in China and broke the monopoly of foreign technology.
"Conventional shaft drilling equipment is often bulky and challenging to move during operations. The time spent on relocating the equipment often exceeds the time spent on actual operations," Wang Yi told reporters. Developing the mobile shaft drilling rig as the first product was aimed at addressing the pain points of low mechanization, low overall efficiency, harsh working environments, and high safety risks in shaft construction, promoting the mechanization and intelligence of underground vertical engineering construction.
From achieving the breakthrough with the mobile shaft drilling rig in 2015 to the development of more than 20 intelligent shaft drilling rigs today, Hunan Chuangyuan's series of intelligent shaft drilling rigs now cover nominal bore diameters from 1m to 7m, with a maximum construction bore diameter of 8m and a maximum depth of 1000m. They are widely used in Underground Mining, water conservancy and hydropower engineering, rail transit engineering, civil air defense military engineering, municipal engineering, and other fields.
What makes Wang Yi most proud is that Hunan Chuangyuan's domestically developed intelligent shaft drilling rigs have captured over 70% of the domestic market share. The CY-R40C intelligent crawler self-propelled slot shaft drilling rig, a global first, has become the sole procurement source for domestic mining enterprises, with a domestic market share of 100%.
Facing increasingly fierce market competition, Wang Yi understands that "customer demand must be the guiding principle because no matter how high the technological content or how dense the knowledge accumulation of innovation, it is ineffective if it cannot be used by customers or create value for the industry." In addition to developing intelligent shaft drilling rigs, Wang Yi led the team to develop a series of products such as excavation platform cars, mining platform cars, and Underground Mining auxiliary equipment. These intelligent products are turning the vision of "liberating miners from harsh and dangerous environments" into a vivid reality.
Looking back at Hunan Chuangyuan's product development journey, Wang Yi has always been consistent in innovating according to application scenarios.
Hunan Chuangyuan introduced the R80C non-base inclined well construction slot shaft drilling rig, which improves the efficiency of well construction. Previously, a well that took 10 days to complete required 10 days to pour concrete foundation. With this drilling rig, 7-10 days of construction time can be saved. At the same time, Chuangyuan also broke through the 45° restriction and was the first in the industry to expand the construction angle to 15°-90°.
Mining in extremely thin ore veins has long been a difficult problem for mining companies and was once known as "the most difficult Mining Method to achieve mechanization." Hunan Chuangyuan launched a full range of intelligent mining and auxiliary equipment for small and medium-sized mines, breaking through industry barriers. Among them, the MT111 micro-rock drilling platform car can achieve remote operation under conditions where the mine body inclination angle is greater than 70° and the mining width is 1.2 meters...
It is understood that the national equipment manufacturing industry's R&D intensity is 2.34%, while Hunan Chuangyuan's annual R&D investment accounts for over 8% of its revenue. Hunan Chuangyuan focuses on innovation to solve practical problems in mining such as safety, environment, efficiency, and cost, maintaining an innovation frequency of launching more than ten new products every year.
As a leader in the field of intelligent mining equipment and technology system solutions, Wang Yi pays no attention to imitators and followers. With a determined gaze, he firmly states, "Innovation centered around China's national conditions is our core competitiveness and the key to our victory."
Currently, Hunan's Xiangjiang New Area is vigorously building a global research and development center city core leading area, a strategic goal that Wang Yi is very optimistic about. "The spirit of daring to be the first in Hunan culture is our confidence," Wang Yi believes that in such a livable city, with strong innovation atmosphere and talent policy support, the road to innovation will be smoother.
