A 14-meter super-large screw that weighs about 30 metric tons rolls off the production line. [Photo/zhoushan.cn]
Jintang, a town in Dinghai district, Zhoushan, has been paving the way to prosperity since it manufactured its first screw in 1982.
Today, one of the biggest manufacturers of screws in the town is Dong Zhongbo's Feiyu Machinery Factory in Shantan village. The annual output value of the company is currently in excess of 6 million yuan ($937,000).
Dong started the business 17 years ago, when his factory was a tiny 200-square-meter studio rented from the village.
A few years after the inception of his company, Dong purchased new equipment and 1,000 square meters of land to establish a factory.
Villagers soon followed suit and opened their own factories. Yao Liang, the director of a screw processing plant that specializes in polishing screws, said that the success of the industry was due to close cooperation instead of competition between screw companies.
Presently, there are more than 150 screw factories offering lathing, punching, polishing and other screw-related services in Shantan village, and many local villagers have turned from wage earners to business owners.
Small and micro-sized screw companies in Jintang have also attracted more people to return to their hometowns. One such person is Wang Bin from Heping village, who returned to his hometown in 2004 to take up an internship in a local screw processing company.
In 2019, Wang set up a screw processing company in Heping.
"I now have a sizable income, stable orders and more importantly, I can spend more time with my family," said Wang.
Statistics show that from 2003 to now, nearly 1,000 Heping natives have returned to work in the screw industry.
Jintang is now the largest manufacturing and exporting base of injection molding machine screws in China.
In the first half of the year, the screw industry in Jintang generated 4.36 billion yuan ($681 million) in output, a year-on-year increase of 14.5 percent. The industry currently employs more than 12,000 workers, according to the Jintang administration committee.
