As the world's fourth-largest manufacturer of aerial work platforms, Zhejiang Dingli's development momentum is remarkable.

In the first half of 2025, Zhejiang Dingli achieved operating revenue of 4.336 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.35%; it realized net profit attributable to shareholders of 1.052 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 27.63%, with the net profit margin further rising to 24.27%. Of this, overseas revenue reached 3.373 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 21.3%, accounting for 77.8% of total revenue.

Even though the domestic construction machinery industry is at the bottom of its cycle, Zhejiang Dingli has still managed to deliver such an impressive report card, which inevitably raises the question: how exactly did Zhejiang Dingli do it?

Deepening overseas market layout through "M&A"

While many domestic peers were still focusing on cultivating the domestic market, Zhejiang Dingli, with forward-looking strategic vision, set its sights on overseas markets.

In the course of its globalization, Zhejiang Dingli chose the business model of "M&A" to enter high-end markets.

2016 was the first year Zhejiang Dingli launched acquisitions of overseas enterprises. That year, Zhejiang Dingli acquired a 20% stake in Italy's MAGNI (a global intelligent telescopic boom forklift company), becoming its second-largest shareholder, and jointly established its first overseas R&D center in Italy. The Chinese-Italian engineer team also jointly developed the M-series boom products and enabled large-capacity boom platforms to break through container transport restrictions, setting a new global standard for adaptability.

Afterward, Zhejiang Dingli sold under the joint brand "MAGNI & DINGLI" in Europe, quickly opening up the market by leveraging MAGNI's reputation in the high-end market; while MAGNI's products entered the Chinese market through Zhejiang Dingli's channels. Since 2016, Zhejiang Dingli has become MAGNI's exclusive agent in China.

In 2017, in order to enter the North American market, Zhejiang Dingli decisively acquired a 25% stake in CMEC, a well-known veteran American aerial work platform company. Unlike the dual-brand strategy in Europe, Dingli chose in the United States to retain CMEC's original brand and team in order to better integrate into the local ecosystem.

This move was nothing short of a masterstroke: it not only enabled Zhejiang Dingli to enter the core rental system of the North American market as a "local brand," but also allowed Zhejiang Dingli to avoid trade frictions to a certain extent. Today, leveraging CMEC's brand influence in the North American market, Zhejiang Dingli has established stable cooperative relationships with a number of large leasing companies.

In 2020, Zhejiang Dingli acquired a 24% stake in Germany's TEUPEN (a global leader in spider aerial work platforms) and established a German R&D center. Zhejiang Dingli and TEUPEN jointly developed high-reach boom platforms, pioneering the "one-key in-situ leg extension" technology and obtaining an international patent, broadening its high-end product line and further consolidating its "technological differentiation" label.

In the following years, Zhejiang Dingli successively set up wholly owned subsidiaries mainly engaged in trade in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore, gradually achieving direct overseas operations. In 2023, Zhejiang Dingli formally exited its equity cooperation with Magni, completing channel autonomy in the European market. In the same year, Zhejiang Dingli achieved 100% ownership of CMEC. It was formally consolidated in May 2024, thereby gaining U.S. domestic production capacity. Zhejiang Dingli's acquisition of CMEC can greatly mitigate the impact of "dual anti" tariffs, but cannot completely avoid them.

Building core competitiveness with technology and products

As a global leader in aerial work platforms, Zhejiang Dingli has invested substantial resources in technological innovation. In the first half of 2025, its R&D expenses reached 144 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 21.82%, a figure that intuitively demonstrates Zhejiang Dingli's firm commitment to technological innovation.

At present, Zhejiang Dingli holds 273 patents, including 146 invention patents and 97 overseas patents. These patented technologies cover multiple key fields such as materials science, power systems, and intelligent control for aerial work platforms, becoming a solid cornerstone for Zhejiang Dingli to build its technological moat.

In terms of products, Zhejiang Dingli has long been the first in the industry to achieve electrification of its full product series and has launched a 3-year warranty service. Among them, the full boom series featuring large capacity and modular design is an industry first.

Zhejiang Dingli is also the world's only manufacturer to achieve mass production of an oil-free, all-electric, environmentally friendly scissor series. This series covers a maximum working height of 5-16 m and a maximum load of 230-450 kg, with no hydraulic system across the entire series, offering advantages such as low energy consumption, greater safety, easier maintenance, greater comfort, and greater environmental friendliness.

At present, Zhejiang Dingli's aerial machinery products fully cover three major series—boom, scissor, and mast—with more than 200 products of different specifications and models, and working heights ranging from 5 meters to 44 meters, capable of meeting the diverse needs of multiple industries and application scenarios such as building construction, shipbuilding, rail transit, warehousing and logistics, municipal engineering, power maintenance, and film and television shooting.

Intelligent manufacturing invigorates development

In order to meet the growing global market demand for aerial work platforms, Zhejiang Dingli has continued to increase capacity expansion and continuously consolidated its global supply capability. Zhejiang Dingli has built an aerial work platform manufacturing plant with industry-leading intelligence and automation. By continuously optimizing and improving production processes and workflows, it has achieved an automated final assembly line that rolls off one scissor product every 7 minutes and one boom product every 30 minutes.

This smart factory widely applies technologies such as big data, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence. Through the informatization and intelligence of product design, production, inspection, traceability, and logistics and warehousing processes, it has achieved digital design, flexible production, and intelligent management, greatly enhancing the company's intelligent manufacturing processes for high-end smart aerial work platforms.

At the same time, through digital information technology, Zhejiang Dingli has built the "Dingli Smart Cloud Big Data Visualization Platform," a fully process-controllable platform covering data collection, system analysis, and intelligent applications, and has launched numerous online real-time, standardized, and systematic smart services, realizing a digitally empowered intelligent manufacturing model across the entire product life cycle.

In March 2024, Zhejiang Dingli announced a plan to invest 1.7 billion yuan of self-raised funds to build a new "annual production of 20,000 new energy aerial work platforms project," with a construction period of 3 years. Upon reaching full production, it is expected to achieve annual sales revenue of approximately 2.5 billion yuan. The project is currently under active construction.

Risks to be faced on the path of development

1 International trade risks

In recent years, there have been many unstable factors in international trade, with considerable uncertainty in geopolitics, trade barriers, industry policies, and shipping conditions. Although Zhejiang Dingli has rich experience in going global and has also experienced anti-dumping and countervailing investigations successively initiated by the United States and the European Union against aerial work platforms imported from China, and obtained the lowest tax rate, if trade frictions further intensify and tariffs rise, this will adversely affect its product exports.

2 Risks of exchange rate fluctuations and untimely collection of receivables

In the first half of 2025, Zhejiang Dingli's overseas receivables stood at 2.983 billion yuan, an increase of 967 million yuan compared with the end of 2024. Zhejiang Dingli's overseas business exports to scattered countries and involves many foreign currencies, and exchange rates are greatly affected by external political and economic fluctuations. If the exchange rates of the relevant currencies fluctuate, this will have a certain impact on its financial condition. At the same time, if its downstream customers do not make payments in a timely manner and cannot pay on schedule, Zhejiang Dingli may face the risk of delayed collection or inability to recover accounts receivable.

3 Risk of price fluctuations in raw materials and other inputs

The main raw material for aerial machinery products is steel. If raw material costs rise sharply in the future, causing product costs to increase, this will adversely affect Zhejiang Dingli's profitability.

In the future, Zhejiang Dingli will continue to make sustained efforts in intelligent manufacturing and global layout, continuously improve its product R&D capabilities, develop more green new energy products, and practice its sustainable development strategy. Although the development process will face certain risks, we believe that Zhejiang Dingli will continue to maintain industry leadership in the aerial work platform track and continuously open up new growth space.