China Lesso: Lead-free pipes promote the quality and healthy life

Company profile
 
China Lesso Group Holdings Limited, shortened as China Lesso, is a large industrial group of home building materials in China. China Lesso’s products and services cover plumbing products, sanitary ware, integral kitchen, PVC profile doors and windows, decorative plates, fire-fighting equipment, hygiene materials, ocean aquaculture cages, environmental protection, home furnishing and building material one-stop o2o services, etc. With the rapid development of internationalization and globalization, China Lesso has more than 50 holding subsidiaries and more than22 production bases distributed I 16 provinces of Mainland China, US, Canada, India, Indonesia and Uganda.
 
True to its mission of “creating a relaxing life”, China Lesso is committed to becoming a world-class  conglomerate in the broader home building materials sector, as a manufacturer that provides customers with products and services of outstanding price-performance and helps build homes of quality and comfort.
 
Challenges
 
PVC (polyvinyl chloride) pipes are mainly used in water supply and drainage system in China. Lead stabilizer has been prohibited in water supply system. However, there hasn't been such a requirement in drainage lead-free system. While producing PVC-U (un-plasticized polyvinyl chloride) pipe fittings, heat stabilizer is added. Due to factors, like the large size of drainage pipes, limited materials, technical incompetence, and cost control, most pipe manufactures in China still use lead stabilizer, which has the risk of precipitating heavy metal lead while in use. This will not only pollute the environment, but also do severe damage to human health. Therefore, how to guarantee production, on the one hand, and to assume enterprises' responsibilities in guaranteeing product quality, protecting environment and customers' lives, on the other hand, is a common challenge facing the PVC product industry.
 
Solutions
 
China Lesso, a leading enterprise in China's PVC pipe production, takes producing lead-free PVC products as its core business for sustainable development. Through continuous exploration and pilot applications, it has finally substituted calcium-zinc stabilizer for lead stabilizer fully, and propelled the scale production of the whole series of lead-free PVC-U drainage pipe fittings. Meanwhile, it participated in the setting of relevant standards and drove the whole PVC-U drainage pipe industry to take a green and environment-friendly path.
 
Pay attention to innovation to provide platforms as support
 
Knowing well the significance of technology innovation to maintain its core competence, China Lesso provides funds, talents and an advanced research platform for technical innovation. The company attaches great importance to the guarantee of research and development expenditure, and its annual input on research and development takes up 3% to 4% of its total input. At present, China Lesso has over 1000 scientific researcher of various kinds. It also cooperates with top universities and research institutions at home and abroad to establish a capacity building channel for research personals. In 2008, China Lesso launched its postdoctoral workstation. In 2011, it built the national technology center and established China National Accredited Laboratories authorized by CNAS and Guangdong Plastic Pipe Engineering Technology Research and Development Center soon afterwards, providing a leading platform for technology innovation.
 
Refined R&D to innovate in lead-free technology
 
Adhering firmly to the principle of "healthy, safe, energy-saving and harmless", China Lesso was the first to throw itself into the exploration and application of lead-free drainage pipes in 2011. After five years of efforts, it finally overcame the shortages of calcium-zinc stabilizer, an alternative for lead stabilizer, in high cost, poor product appearance and performance, and broke through the technical difficulty of using calcium-zinc stabilizer to produce large diameter and lead-free PVC-U pipe fittings. At the same time, through gradual adjustment, improvement and verification, the company was the first to achieve fully substitution of calcium-zinc stabilizer for lead stabilizer and the scale production of the whole series of lead-free PVC-U drainage pipe fittings, thus providing customers with more excellent and safer products and protecting our green homeland.
 
Responsibility-orientated to lead the lead-free trend in the industry
 
China Lesso assumes its responsibility and fulfills its mission actively. It promoted the project of The Technology Research and Development and Industrialization of Lead-free PVC-U Pipe Fittings for Building Drainage to the whole industry in Guangdong innovation and development conference to introduce the recipe and technology of calcium-zinc stabilizer and to popularize its application. Besides, it has presided over and participated in the amendment of relevant national standards to standardize the application of lead stabilizer in drainage pipes and to drive the whole industry to become environment friendly and lead-free.
 
Achievements
 
Social benefit
 
It protects green environment and guarantees the health of staff and customers. The calcium-zinc stabilizer is mainly made from calcium salt, zinc salt and lubricant. Using calcium-zinc stabilizer to substitute for lead stabilizer can avoid contamination to soil, water and air during the production, processing and use, and provide residents with pure drinking water and a green living environment, thus creating a relaxing life truly.
 
It leads the industry to take a path of sustainable development. China Lesso, as the first to make a breakthrough in lead-free stabilizer technology and achieve its industrialization, on the one hand, provides a reference and support for lead-free technology in pipe industry. Its innovative actions, on the other hand, have good demonstration and leading function, which strengthens the sustainable development awareness of the pipe industry.
 
It advances the internationalization of the industry. European countries had produced lead-free drainage pipes in as early as 2015. The successful development of lead-free PVC-U drainage pipe fittings production technology by China Lesso, along with the setting and amendment of relevant standards, speeds up the internationalization of domestic pipe industry.
 
Economic benefit
 
China Lesso is the only enterprise realizing lead-free production of the whole series of PVC-U pipe fittings in China. At present, PVC-U drainage pipes are the best sold product of Lesso, whose sales reaches several billion yuan each year. From 2011 to now, its increase has surpassed 80%. In 2016, when China's economy was depressed, China Lesso still maintained a steady increase in sales revenue, market expanding and main performance indicators, with a total revenue of 17.221 billion yuan, increasing by 12.8% compared with 2015.
 
China Lesso's concentration and efforts in exploring environment-friendly stabilizer received great attention and was spoken highly by peers, the government and customers. The calcium-zinc stabilizer technology was bestowed the second prize of Guangdong science and technology award and second prize of China light industry association.
 
Prospect
 
In the future, China Lesso will continuously push forward the transformation and application of lead-free pipe technology and actively devote itself to the formulation of standards. Based on its own advantages, China Lesso will comprehensively push forward the lead-free environment protection and help improve the quality pipes and healthy life. At the same time, it will continue to increase investment in scientific and technological innovation and the cultivation of scientific and technological personnel, and strengthen the transformation and utilization of scientific and technological achievements to provide consumers with safe and quality products while creating a responsible brand image and promote the sustainable development of enterprises and society.