A customer case study from the 140th China Import and Export Fair

Factory visit: 22 October 2026 · Fogang County, Qingyuan, Guangdong · Guangdong Xin Tongshi Group Co., Ltd. (TONGSHI)

Most supply relationships in the cooling-parts business still begin the same way — a booth, a catalogue, a business card. What actually decides whether that first contact turns into a purchase order is what happens in the two weeks after the fair closes.

This is the story of one overseas distributor who did not sit and wait for a quotation by email. He met us at the 140th Canton Fair, added our sales representative on WhatsApp, and three days after the show ended he was standing beside a brazing line in Fogang County, Qingyuan, watching radiators come off the furnace.

The first conversation: Booth 9.3 G33-34 and H13-14

The buyer — a purchasing manager at an aftermarket distributor in Middle East— came to our stand with a short list rather than a general enquiry. That made the conversation easy to focus.

He was sourcing three groups of parts

♦ Radiators for light and heavy trucks, where the failure he worried about most was fin collapse under vibration and heat cycling

♦ Water tanks for generator sets, a category in which downtime cost matters more than unit price

Elaine, from our export sales team, walked him through the samples on the booth and explained where TONGSHI sits in the chain: not a trading company reselling other factories' goods, but a source manufacturer that carries out product development, tooling and die design, production and testing in-house — 58 series and more than 18,000 specifications covering passenger cars, trucks, construction machinery, generators and new energy vehicles.

Two things on the stand moved the conversation from interesting to worth checking in person.

The folded-fin edge process. Our patented edge-forming method strengthens the cooling fin at the point where it normally fails first, preventing fin collapse and keeping heat-transfer performance stable over long service. For a distributor whose returns were concentrated in truck and generator applications, this was the specific problem he had come to solve.

The NEV range. Low-temperature auxiliary tanks and battery and motor cooling radiators for current electric and hybrid platforms — a category he had not expected a radiator factory to be quoting yet.

No price list was agreed that day. What was agreed was a WhatsApp contact and an invitation to see the plant.

The WhatsApp thread: three days, no email chain

Between the closing of the fair on 19 October and the factory visit on 22 October, everything was handled on WhatsApp — the channel most of our overseas buyers actually use.

In those three days Elaine sent:

The model list and dimensional drawings for the categories he had flagge

♦ Photographs of the Fogang plant’s brazing and leak-testing lines, so that he knew what he was coming to see

♦ A packing and private-label proposal for the parts he intended to sell under his own brand

♦ A simple visit plan: pickup in Guangzhou, plant tour, laboratory review and a commercial meeting the same afternoon

He replied with the part numbers he wanted to see in production and the audit points his own customers required him to verify. That list became the agenda for 22 October.

22 October: the audit in Fogang

The plant sits in Fogang County, Qingyuan, Guangdong — roughly one and a half hours by road from Guangzhou, or a short high-speed rail journey to Qingyuan followed by a company pickup. We arrange the transfer; buyers usually arrive before lunch and leave with a signed visit report.

The group’s manufacturing footprint covers more than 160,000 m² across three production bases in China, with four overseas branches and six trading companies serving customers in more than 60 countries. On this visit the focus was the Fogang site.

What the audit covered

1. Incoming material and tube quality. He asked to see the aluminium single-composite tube stock and the brazing clad layer, not only the finished core. Material certificates were pulled for the batch running that morning.

2. Fin forming and the folded edge. At the fin line he watched the edge-forming step that gives the fin its rigidity, then handled finished and rejected samples side by side to judge how well the edge held its shape.

3. Core assembly and brazing. He followed a batch from tube-and-fin stacking to the brazing furnace, and asked for the process parameters and records for that run — the question a trading company’s factory tour cannot answer.

4. Leak testing. Every unit is tested on inspection equipment rather than sampled. He watched the test bench run and asked how rejects are segregated and dispositioned.

5. The in-house laboratory. Our testing centre holds CNAS accreditation, the national laboratory-recognition scheme that takes part in the ILAC and APAC mutual-recognition arrangements, and performs pressure, burst, thermal-cycle and durability testing in-house. For a distributor who has to defend warranty claims to his own customers, this was where he spent the longest time.

6. Quality system and traceability. He reviewed the IATF 16949-certified quality management system documentation, batch traceability records and the corrective-action loop for customer complaints. Our car radiator line also holds Guangdong Provincial High-Tech Product recognition.

7. Packing and labelling. Drop testing, carton configuration, barcode and private-label artwork, including whether his brand could appear on the box without our own mark alongside it.

8. Capacity, tooling and lead times. With more than 1,900 employees and in-house tooling, we could quote both his aftermarket volumes and an OEM or ODM programme built from his drawings or from samples. Minimum order quantities, tooling lead time and delivery schedule were discussed against his actual sell-through figures rather than a standard catalogue.

Where the visit landed

By the end of the afternoon the discussion had moved well past the sample stage of the fair:

♦ Samples requested for the truck radiator and generator water tank models he had flagged, to be bench-tested against his current stock

♦ A trial order planned on the heater core and condenser range, packed under his own label

♦ A tooling review opened for one OEM application for which he holds drawings but has no supplier

♦ A follow-up date agreed for a pricing review once his bench-test results are in

Nothing was signed on the day, and we did not expect it to be. What the visit produced was the one thing a quotation cannot: a buyer who has seen the furnace, the test bench and the rejection bin, and who now knows exactly what he is buying.

Elaine, export sales team: “At the fair we can only show a sample in the hand. In Fogang he could see the same part at every stage — the tube, the fin, the brazed core, the leak test. After that, the price conversation becomes a normal business conversation instead of a trust problem.”

The buyer, at the end of the tour: “I have visited four suppliers in Guangdong on this trip. Two were trading offices with a warehouse. Here I could follow a batch from material to packing, and the laboratory answered the questions my own customers ask me. That is the difference I was looking for.”

Why we invite buyers to Fogang

A factory visit is the cheapest due diligence a distributor can carry out, and we would rather you spend a day here than a year exchanging emails.

If you are planning a sourcing trip to Guangdong, tell us before you book your flights:

1. The models or categories you are working on. Part numbers, photographs of the units you buy today, or drawings.

2. The audit points your customers require. We will build the tour and the documentation pack around them.

3. Your target market and volumes. So that the commercial meeting on the same day is grounded in your figures.

4. Your arrival date. We will arrange the pickup from Guangzhou or Qingyuan and confirm which production lines will be running.

Visits can be arranged in English, and technical questions are answered by the engineers who run the lines, not only by sales.

Talk to us before your next Guangdong trip. Message Elaine on WhatsApp, or send your enquiry through our website with your model list, and we will come back with a visit plan, a quotation and the samples you need to test.

Guangdong Xin Tongshi Group Co., Ltd. (TONGSHI) · Fogang County, Qingyuan, Guangdong, China · Founded 2004 · 58 series and more than 18,000 specifications · more than 160,000 m² across three production bases · more than 1,900 employees · IATF 16949 · CNAS-accredited testing centre · customers in more than 60 countries