Before the trip, the International Trade team didn't really know what to expect. Central Asia was still relatively new territory for Huayu Transformer. Sure, there had been a few inquiries here and there, and some clients had visited the factory in Xuzhou. But setting up a booth and showing the Huayu name at a local exhibition—this was a first.
The team put the booth together clean and simple. In the center sat a cutaway model of an S20 series oil-immersed power transformer. Beside it, a sample coil from an SCB18 dry-type transformer. On the back wall, posters showing Huayu's track record with 110kV-class products and a few overseas project case studies. The booth wasn‘t huge, but everything that needed to be there was there.
One local engineer stopped in front of the S20 model and stayed there for quite a while. He asked a string of questions: What’s the short-circuit impedance on this transformer? What insulation class can you guarantee? How does the temperature rise control hold up under high ambient heat? The Huayu technical rep answered each one in detail. When they finished, the engineer nodded and said something that the translator rendered as: "Spec-wise, you're comparable to European brands. Price-wise, you're more competitive. We'll give this serious consideration back home."
The sample coil for the dry-type transformer drew its share of attention too. Several visitors ran their hands over the cast epoxy surface and took a long, close look. One operations engineer from a substation on the outskirts of Tashkent said that a lot of their aging transformers were due for replacement. The government had allocated special funds for equipment upgrades, and they were actively scouting electric power transformer suppliers—both domestic and international. "The finish on this coil," he said, "is cleaner than what I've seen from other booths around the hall."