How to choose bearing suppliers in China?
The famous brand original bearings (SKF, FAG, TIMKEN ,NSK etc...)
If you need to import original brand bearings from China, you could find many authorized distributors (more than 300)in China, the only problem is the price.(Bearing price + Tax). To be honest, over 60 customers had asked about the original brand bearing prices, only one had ever bought a small quantity from me, all about the prices. Maybe it’s better to purchase original bearings from the authorized distributors in your own country. I’ve never bought original SKF bearings except China, it’s just my advice, welcome to compare prices:)).
So are there any SKF or other famous brand bearing factories in China? Yes, a lot. SKF has over 100 factories over the world, 18 of them are in China. NSK has about 63 factories worldwide, 12 of them are in China. Timken owns about 52 factories, 8 of them in China.(You could find these information on their official websites). For these bearing factories,their bearings are not all directly supply Chinese market, they will send to the other countries according to their head office redeployment .But all the bearings are “ORIGINAL” bearings, they are produced based on the same standard. You don’t have to worry about the quality.
Bearings Made in China
The best solution to choose a supplier is from the Fairs, and the best bearing fair in China in my opinion is China International Bearing Industry Expo in Shanghai.Their prices may higher but quality is guaranteed.
The second way is to find a small factory or trader to help you find all the bearings you need with good prices and quality. It requires luck and time. The person is important.
Here are some information about Chinese bearing industry accumulation areas:There are several bearing industry zones in China, such as Linqing, Wafangdian, Cixi, Changzhou etc.Linqing is the comprehensive bearing manufacture area, the other cities or towns are specializing in one or several types of bearings. Wafangdian specializing in big size bearings such as spherical roller bearings, famous brand:ZWZ. Cixi focus on miniature bearings like skateboard bearings, famous brand: HCH. Changzhou is mainly manufacturing needle roller bearings,famous brand:NRB.
Basically you could find all types of bearings in Linqing city, some are manufactures, some are distributors or dealers.If you are confident in your acknowledge about bearing supply chain in China, you could just visit the factory that you need, negotiate with factory owners and get the best prices. However, it does not mean that you will get the best prices even you finally find the factory yourself, the prices for distributors and foreign customers are different. The factory owners will keep a balance between their dealers and foreign customers. In most cases, the dealers or the trading company could get better prices than foreign customers, so that they could survive in this saturated market.
If you care about the prices very much, and at the same time the quality should be good. Then you’ll have the opportunities to meet frauds and cheaters, i don’t want to admit it but there actually are. Price and quality question is an eternal contradiction. There are so many ways to save money in bearing manufacturing, all these little tricks you could not see through your eyes. Many of my customers told me that they have rich experience souring in Chinese bearing market, but in my opinion, you will never see the production details if we don’t want you to see. For me, reliable suppliers are more important than customers.
The last part I’m gonna tell you some misunderstandings about bearings.
1.I used to think that all my customers know it, but actually just few of them had ever seen a realistic bearing production process.Maybe you have ever asked your suppliers about their main products, they will tell you that our factory could manufacture deep groove ball bearings, tapered roller bearings and some mounted bearings also. Will you immediately figure out that this factory is just an assembling factory ? One full-automation bearing production line could only manufacture one type or types in a small range, it usually depends on the outer ring dimension,we need to spend about at least 150,000 dollars to buy an full-automation production line. So 99% of the factories could not “manufacture”(not assemble) roller bearings and ball bearings at the same time. As we all know, SKF manufactures everything related with bearings, but every single factory of SKF make just a few types of bearings. For example, SKF Jinan factory, they only manufacture tapered roller bearings for cars and trucks.
So if you have a big range of bearing requirements, i’m afraid it’s very hard to gather all of the original factories and ensure that all factories finish orders well. That’s how we survive in this market ,we solve problems for you, we have our own factory and at the same time, we could use experience and our good relationship with other manufacturers to help you finish your orders with reasonable prices and good quality.
2.There are good quality bearings in China. As the data that i showed above, all the famous bearing brand set their factories in China, the important thing to judge the bearing quality is not to see if it’s Made in China or P.R.C, it’s the STANDARD. SKF factories in China use the same quality standard with the factories in Sweden. The difference is many small Chinese bearing factories are still manufacturing low quality bearings, we provide bearings based on our orders. SKF only produces best quality bearings and no need orders for low-end market. According to the data from Chinese Bearing Association, 70% of our export bearings are facing low-end market. China could not manufacture bearings for High-Speed(Bullet) Trains, for big jets, but for most of the bearing application market, customers use many of our bearings and they are working well. We will never stop improving our bearing technology, creating value for our customers.