A few days ago, The Puyang Down Garments and Products Base (Taiqian as the center) was evaluated as the third batch of the National Foreign Trade Transition and Upgrade Professional Model Base.
  This is another “National Level” signboard won by Puyang after it is awarded as the national industrialized export base. Up to now, Puyang has two of the three National Foreign Trade Transition and Upgrade Professional Model Bases, ranking the first place in number. In addition, it has four in 22 provincial-level export bases province-wide, taking the first in number.
  As an inland city, Puyang city actively explores the effective channels of product export on the basis of development of leading industries such as down feather garments, characteristic chemical industry and petroleum equipment. It constantly strengths construction of export bases, and expands the road to overseas for enterprises in Puyang with all its strength.
  Stronger and stronger in itself strength
  With the honors coming such as the  Land of China DownChina’s Feather Town and the biggest feather distributing center in the north of the Yangtze River, it is hailed first that this county boasts the down feather industry.
  Taiqian’s down industry started since the 1970s. At that time, Taiqian people found a job for living in the northeast and northwest of China, doing the business of duck and goose feathers collecting in villages. After taking back the feathers, they sold them to the feather processing enterprises in Xiaoshan region, Zhejiang. Through the development over years, Taiqian had a purchasing and sales force of twenty thousand people and a dozen of feather purchasing and sales specialized villages, becoming a biggest feather distributing center step by step in the north of the Yangtze River. The hardworking people in Taiqian have created a wonder in the down feather industry.
  At the same time of expanding production scale, the Taiqian down industry has gone through low efficiency and confusion in extensive operation. Because of preliminary product processing and low added value, it earns limited profits only in domestic sales of down products.
  Taiqian people initiated to seek opportunities in difficulty. Under the support of the local government, the enterprises in this county strived to cooperate with research units and universities, constantly intensified production technology, style design and the development and innovation of techniques and brands, and upgraded enterprises’ technical level and innovative capacity in an all-round way.
  Moreover, the down enterprises did foreign trade business in overseas markets gradually at the same time of deepening product added value. In 2013, this county completed down and garment export amount of 220 million dollars (its self operating export of 140 million yuan). Its products were sold to 23 countries and regions such as US, Canada and Taiwan. Over 2 million dollars of export amount was achieved in 16 countries and regions. Its export amount of down and garment product in the foreign trade amount came to 96.2% from 62.8%, up 33.4 percentage points; the contribution rate to export growth was up to 85.3% from 46%.
  More and more support from governments
  Strengthening construction of export bases can effectively improve economic structure, push new-type industrializing progress, and upgrade regional economic competitiveness in an all-round way. During the 12th Five Year Plan, China will make efforts to drive the construction of export bases.
  Facing the opportunity, the Puyang government will pose take the export base construction as an important measure to expand the trade scale and changing the growth mode. Great attention will be paid to the construction as an official business. The Puyang municipal government established a leadership group of export base construction where the vice-mayor was assigned as the group leader, and main principals from municipal commercial department, development reform commission, HR and social insurance institution, financial and sci-tech departments as vice group leaders. The group held a meeting regularly, summing up business affairs, and dealing with difficulties and problems in export base construction. At the same time, the municipal commercial department drew out and issued the annual working targets about export bases, and worked out corresponding policies and supporting measures to promote sustainable and sound development of export bases. 
   Meanwhile, the Puyang municipal government unveiled a series of pertinent supporting policies such as the Opinions on Implementation of Speeding up the Export Base Construction and the Methods of Special Guiding Funds Management of Puyang Foreign Trades, and established the municipal infrastructure development plan. According to the implementing steps of laying foundation in two years, making a progress in three years and having a great development in five years, it strives to build up six provincial export bases and two national-level foreign trade transition and upgrading demonstration bases in the virtue of industrial distributing centers by the end of the 12th Five Year Plan.
   In addition, the declaration of the Puyang Down Garments and Products Base (Taiqian as a center) was further carried out. At the beginning of June 2013, the the leaders of Mmunicipal Ccommercial Affairs Bbureau led relevant working members of Taiqian county and went to attend the declaration training meetings of the national foreign trade transition demonstration bases organized by the State Commercial MinistryMinistry of Commerce and Provincial Department of Commerceial Department in Fuzhou and Zhengzhou, so that they could master policies and declaration material requirements. On June 26, the municipal commercial bureau organized the principals of relevant department for a special meeting to further assign the detail working steps, and established a special organization in July to employ experts province-wide for special discussion and argument for the declaration. By this way, the purpose is to find the positioning correctly, make clear working thoughts, give prominence to characteristics, emphasize the key working points, and work out the future targets.
   No pays, no gains. The Puyang Down Garments and Products Base (Taiqian as the center) was evaluated as the third batch of the National Foreign Trade Transition and Upgrade Professional Model Base in the end by the National Commercial MinistryMinistry of Commerce. Up to now, Puyang boasts two of the three national foreign trade transition and upgrading export bases, ranking No. 1 province-wide.
  For achievements, Mr. Kang Hebin, the Director of the Municipal Commercial Affairs Bureau, said “aAfterwards, we will further strive to strengthen the policy support, work out the management mechanism of export bases in an all-round way, perfect the public platform service functions to develop the international export brands, and enhance the leading overseas competitiveness of export bases practically, in order to promote changes of Puyang foreign trade growth way, and upgrade quality and level of foreign trade development in an all-round way. 
   More and more enterprising al confidence
   As a biggest feather distributing base in the north of the Yangtze River, Taiqian county has 80 down feather garments and product making enterprises currently, with an annual garment and feather craft outputs of 10 million pieces of down garments and feather crafts. They drive 120 feather garments and products enterprise city-wide. The new pattern comes into being by takingthat taking  feather industrial zone as a carrier, Snowbird as a key backbone, and the down feather enterprise as an agglomeration.
  However, before the down garments and products making base was upgraded as the “National Level” one, the down feather enterprises had to go to provincial and municipal quality supervision departments for quality inspection as it had no the inspection qualification of products such as down garments and bedclothes. With the successful upgrading of Taiqian county down garments and products base, the feather processing public technical R&D platform will gain more national support. This platform is undertaken by the Snowbird Down Company which integrates duck and goose incubationbreeding, raising, processing and sales, and feather water washing and sorting as well as production of series of products such as down garments and bedclothes province-wide.
   “This is not doubt to install an accelerator for down wearclothes and bedclothes production enterprises in our county, so that we can have more convenient and faster quality inspection for such products as down garments and bedclothes, so as to upgrade our enterprise competitiveness in the overseas markets,” said a relevant principal of the Snowbird Enterprise Co., Ltd. Next, the Snowbird will strengthen to supports to feather processing and export enterprises in the base depending on the feather processing public technical R&D platform, and provide more forward-looking and fundamental services such as key public technical development and experimental cooperation, down inspection, and technical transformation of feather processing production lines. It strives to make the down business bigger and stronger.
   The Huatai Feather Product Co., Ltd. near Snowbird Enterprise Co., Ltd. is also a star enterprise. The feather masks made by it are sold in dozenstens of countries and regions such as US, Canada and Europe. When knowing the successful upgrading of Taiqian down clothes and product-making base, this company has started to plan how to take advantage of the “gold-lettered” signboard to upgrade attraction and competitiveness of its products.
  “We go to Hong Kong and attend product expositions every year. We are planning to print the national-level down garment and product base ion our enterprise materials this year. By this way, we can increase exposure rate and reputation of our enterprises,” said Ai Yanqin who is a principal of Huatai Feather Products Company. She is confident for the future plan.