LAHORE: Shifeng, a leading Chinese agricultural machinery and automobile manufacturing company, is planning to launch small tractors in Punjab after a successful venture in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The Chinese brand small tractors would be launched by a joint venture of local and Chinese counterparts under the brand of Dailuda & Shifeng, targeting the small landholding farmers, who are unable to afford expensive high horsepower (HP) tractors.
Talking to media on the sidelines of Punjab Agri-Expo 2019 at the Lahore Expo Centre, Rashid Mukhtar, a representative of Dailuda-Shifeng, said farmers were using these small horsepower tractors in KPK for the last seventeen years successfully. “These tractors are helping small-scale landholders to meet their requirement of farming and harvesting. Now we have decided to explore the potential of Punjab market,” Mukhtar said.
Mukhtar said,” Introduction of 25HP to 35HP small tractors in Punjab will be another reflection of continued and developing Sino-Pak cooperation and will be helpful in learning from Chinese success stories in agriculture sector”. “Since landholdings are dividing as inheritance and now there are more small landholders than before and affording a big tractor is not possible for them.”
He said,” The price of our machine will be in their reach sufficient to meet all their agricultural needs, while small tractors are fuel efficient, which will help reduce the input cost of the growers”.
The company has also been manufacturing different agricultural implements supported by its small tractors but is not marketing those as local domestically produced implements by the good manufacturers in Punjab mainly from Okara can be used with these tractors, the Dailuda-Shifeng official said.
He said the company was also in diesel engines and three wheelers business, while it was working on introduction of electric cars also. “We have plans to introduce these electric cars in Pakistan too but prior to their launch, charging stations for these vehicles have to be set up by the government,” Mukhtar said adding that their electric vehicles had the capacity of going up to 200 kilometers after one charge, but even then charging stations were a must.
He said import was not a solution to introduce new gadgets into any market and they planning to set up a facility in Pakistan too for manufacturing small tractors and other machinery. “We will take local vending industry and dealers on board, once we finalise our program to go for manufacturing in Pakistan,” he concluded.
