March 13, 2018 is the 20 years’ anniversary of the establishment of Trend. Trend held a small celebration in Beijing recently, and then a cocktail party during Ceramitec Exhibition in Munich Germany in April, and another cocktail party during Ceramics China Exhibition in May to thank our major global partners and customers at home and abroad.

Looking back to the beginning of Trend establishment in March 1998, our total investment was only US$60,000, and the annual production capacity was only 250MT. But since the establishment, Trend has grown rapidly and turned into a major supplier of cordierite-mullite kiln furniture in the world. International cooperation and innovation have become the internal driving forces for the development of Trend. Through strategic cooperation with British and German partners, standardization, technical exchange and production cooperation, plus a series of major capital investment, Trend production capability has been comparable to that of International kiln furniture manufacturers. Promoted by these driving forces, the subsequent development means that the annual production capacity of Trend has now exceeded 18,000MT, which is more than 70 times that of the past.

"In addition to our efforts to continuously deepen international cooperation, we also focus on the development trend of new industries," said Mr. Guo Haizhu, one of the founders of Trend Industrial Ceramics. "Providing R&D solutions for kiln furniture applications in the field of microcrystalline stone, energy and foamed ceramics, and applying innovative integrated production option and strong support structure, I am proud to say that we are able to produce almost all shapes and sizes of cordierite-mullite kiln furniture, with the world's much comprehensive product portfolio".

In the past two decades, Trend has been recognized as an excellent enterprise in the industry and an important contributor to the development of Chinese ceramics, powder metallurgy, microcrystalline stone and new energy. After years of continuous development, Trend has become one of the important enterprises in the kiln furniture markets in China and the world. The ongoing efforts to continuously improve production technology have also been officially recognized, and Trend was awarded the Special Contribution Award for the 30 Years’ Anniversary of China Ceramics at a special ceremony last May.

"In the future development process, Trend will continue to follow up the application and development trend of new industries and provide advanced kiln furniture solutions. At the same time, Trend will also explore and research new materials and expand the scope of product applications", Mr. Guo Haizhu added. "We will also invest more energy in researching and supplying more non-mullite-cordierite materials, and continue to optimize our plans to provide a ‘one-stop solution’ to our customers."

The 20 years’ anniversary of Trend coincides with an extremely exciting time. "We are building a more advanced and automated factory (Tianjin Trend)," said Mr. Guo Haizhu. "The new Tianjin factory is scheduled to be completed in August 2018, which will further increase Trend total annual output to 22,000MT. Our lead time will be greatly shortened, and the product quality will be further improved.”

In the early days of Trend establishment in 1998, Mr. Yu Faming, the first chairman of Trend, laid a solid foundation for Trend development. Together with Mr. Yu, as an expert in the refractory industry and one of the founders of Trend, Mr. Guo Haizhu not only continuously expanded the production fields of Trend and promoted technical innovations, but also made outstanding contributions to the technical development of China ceramic industry. The China Ceramics Association awarded Mr. Guo Haizhu the honorary title of ‘Outstanding Entrepreneur to Promote the Development of China Ceramic Technology’.

In the following years, Mr. Brian Dodd, IPS Ceramics (our business and technical partner from the UK), and EmcoTherm from Germany helped us to enter the international market.

Today, Trend has a young management team, and everyone at Trend has great expectations on the bright development prospects in the next 20 years!