Finland-based elevator giant KONE will further promote its investment and research and development in China, its largest market worldwide and a key manufacturing hub, said the company's CEO and President Philippe Delorme in an exclusive interview with China Central Television (CCTV) on Friday.
There are about 25 million elevators in the world, of which China accounts for 10 million, said Delorme, adding that China accounts for about half of the one million elevators put into use globally each year,
The executive stressed that for the elevator industry, digitalization and sustainable development are the most important trends at present, and these are also the two pillars of KONE's development strategy in China.
"Maybe 10 years ago, China was not at the forefront of digital [technologies]. China has vastly adopted digital technologies in the past 10 years. And what's amazing is the scale -- it's a big country, with many people, and people are hungry to adopt digital technology, actually, more hungry than what I see in many other places in the world," he said.
Delorme also highlighted China's "dual carbon" goals -- its ambitions to peak emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 -- is working hard to promote and believes that this provides his company with vast opportunities to apply innovative green technologies.
"We have an elevator technology that is like hybrid cars, which is, when the elevator goes down, you take the energy, and store energy, and when the elevator goes up, you reuse the energy. We call it regenerative-drive hybrid elevators," he said.
Delorme also talked about China's real estate market. He said that although the country's real estate market is currently facing some challenges, with the introduction of a series of targeted measures by the government and the long-term positive fundamentals of the Chinese economy, its real estate industry can still provide companies with broad development opportunities in the long run.
He added that there are a large number of old buildings in China that need to be renovated, and this alone will bring huge opportunities to the elevator industry.
"We have always been in China and we want to be very strong in China. We've made big investment in China. We are making R and D investment, and we keep doing this investment and I'm very happy we can do this," he said.
Finland-based elevator giant KONE to delve deeper into Chinese market: CEO
