For JA Solar, a leading global photovoltaic company, 2009 is a very critical year. This year, the leaders of JA Solar Technology personally smashed a batch of defective monocrystalline silicon rod products, and said loudly: "Large enterprises must have a high degree of quality awareness, and smashing the brand is equivalent to smashing the future of the enterprise!" There must be no concession at this point, whoever smashes the company's brand will smash whose job! ”
These words are very simple and very rare. In 2009, during the period of rapid development of China's manufacturing industry, the main theme of enterprises was to fight for scale, output and orders, especially for the photovoltaic industry that had just "taken off".
In 2014, China first put forward the theory of "three transformations", one of which is "from made in China to Chinese brand", and in this regard, JA Solar began to implement this concept at least five years in advance. Over the years, JA Solar has been a contemporaneous "race", constantly empowering brands with advanced strategies, during which it has achieved global influence, new quality productivity, and cultural penetration, and finally gathered into a brand force that is enough to lead the direction of the world's photovoltaic tide.
Led by technology, it refreshes the world's perception of domestic products
▲A 550MW PV project in Lu Ninh, Vietnam, using JA Solar's PERC modules
In 2001, China officially joined the World Trade Organization, and the whole country rejoiced. Since then, the mainland has been able to give full play to its own advantages, deeply integrate into the world division of labor system, and the scale of investment and trade has grown rapidly, and a golden age has been grandly opened in the cheers of the people and the operation of industrial machines.
At that time, based on the advantages of labor-intensive industries, although the share of China's foreign trade grew at a gratifying rate, most of the export products were mainly raw materials, agricultural products and low-end industrial products, among which the huge export volume of clothing, furniture and household appliances was even more well-known. As a result, cheap and low added value became the label of Chinese products at that time, and almost all enterprises involved in foreign trade would not consider these things, resulting in the international image value of Chinese brands becoming more and more limited.
But there are always exceptions, and China's PV industry is the exception to never be satisfied with the status quo. Even though the raw materials, equipment, and markets of the mainland photovoltaic industry were all dependent on overseas at that time, and most of the enterprises were mainly low-end processing businesses, almost every photovoltaic company had the dream of impacting the high-end and wanted to brand the world.
In the entire photovoltaic manufacturing industry chain, solar cells are the link with the highest technical value. If Chinese PV companies want to break away from low-end processing and promote high-end ecological niches, they must make batteries, and they must be global leaders.
In 2008, JA Solar began laboratory research and development of PERC cell technology, which was the most advanced at the mass production level at that time. Around 2012, based on the huge scale of China's photovoltaic manufacturing industry, European and American countries successively launched anti-subsidy and anti-dumping investigations on China's photovoltaic industry, and the market fell to the freezing point. At this life-and-death moment, JA Solar did not reduce its R&D investment in the slightest, and finally obtained the PERC core technology patent in this year, and became the first company in the global photovoltaic industry to mass-produce PERC modules in 2014.
With its advanced technology products, JA Solar's global shipments have increased year by year, which has greatly subverted the inherent impression of overseas PV products in China.
On this basis, JA Solar continues to increase its investment in photovoltaic technology and actively prepares for the next generation, which is today's n-type photovoltaic technology. In 2018, JA Solar's n-type monocrystalline cell efficiency reached 22.5%; In 2019, the conversion efficiency of the cell further increased to 23.8%; Today, JA Solar's n-type cell conversion efficiency has reached 26.3%, ranking at the world's leading level, and the DeepBlue 4.0 Pro series of modules based on the cell has become one of the most popular n-type products in the world due to its advanced technology, once again refreshing the international market's perception of China's PV brand value.
▲A zero-carbon campus project using JA Solar's n-type DeepBlue 4.0 Pro modules
Values are unified, and sustainable development is parallel to the world
March 2024 coincides with Ramadan, the month of Ramadan for Muslims in the Middle East. In the United Arab Emirates, a group of volunteers from JA Solar held iftar meals and visited the poor workers in different photovoltaic projects one by one, and were warmly welcomed. Although it is a small kindness, this move has won a lot of local recognition, respect and help, and will always be the universal values of mankind.
In JA Solar's view, brand building should not only have "hardware" such as technical products to constitute flesh and blood, but also "behavioral awareness" based on values to enrich the brand. In recent years, JA Solar attaches great importance to the universal value of sustainable development, actively combines its own brand with sustainable development, and puts forward the sustainable development concept of "Green to Green, Green to Grow, Green to Great", which has been fully implemented, which has won great favor from customers around the world.
In terms of environmental impact, JA Solar has established a "Supplier Social Responsibility and Sustainability Assessment" system, which incorporates carbon disclosure, carbon footprint and green electricity use into the supplier assessment and scoring criteria to help value chain partners strengthen their awareness of sustainable development, and promotes raw material carbon footprint certification to strictly monitor the sustainability of raw materials to minimize the environmental impact of the procurement process.
At the same time, JA Solar is actively building green and smart factories, using innovative means such as industrial robots, Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence (AI) to empower manufacturing, and adopting advanced production processes and equipment, and introducing a large number of green electricity to improve energy efficiency, reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions in the production process, and improve the level of waste and water recycling. At present, six production bases of JA Solar have been included in the list of "Green Factories" by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. By 2050, JA Solar has pledged to make its sites around the world zero-carbon factories.
▲JA Solar National Green Factory: Hefei Base Component Workshop
In terms of paying attention to "people" themselves, JA Solar attaches great importance to the protection of employees' basic human rights and labor rights and interests, provides employees with a compensation and welfare system that is both internally fair and externally competitive, pays attention to the diverse needs of different employee groups, and creates a vibrant workplace environment from multiple dimensions such as employee growth, occupational health and safety, democratic communication, and employee care.
Externally, since 2007, JA Solar has continued to carry out the "Three Major Benefiting the People", namely the "100 Hope Primary School Donation Project", "10,000 Poor Students Relief Project" and "Bright Project for Poor Cataract Patients", to help the development of rural education and medical services by improving teaching hardware facilities, providing learning materials and grants, and carrying out medical assistance. In addition, JA Solar also actively supports disaster response and overseas assistance.
▲JA Solar helps children in school
In 2023, JA Solar ranked first in the "ESG Evaluation of Private Listed Companies" conducted by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, which shows its sustainable development achievements.
Don't take shortcuts, seek truth and be pragmatic to create a century-old foundation
As a perennial company in the first echelon of the global photovoltaic industry, JA Solar may be the most low-key of the echelon. There are many people who say that JA Solar is like a middle-aged cadre with a decent style and wise thinking, mature, reliable, down-to-earth, and reassuring.
The root of this image comes from JA Solar's corporate culture of sincerity, simplicity, awe and gratitude. These eight words are simple to say, but it is not easy to unite knowledge and action, and it is even contrary to some business instincts.
In 2017, JA Solar signed an order with a U.S. company, and later the market situation changed, and if JA Solar executed the order, the company would basically not make money. At that time, many companies in the industry broke the contract for unprofitable orders, and after repeated discussions, the management of JA Solar finally decided to put integrity first and executed the contract as required. This move was seen by the customer, and afterwards, the customer took the initiative to compensate 2 million US dollars, and at the same time doubled the amount of orders.
Some dealers revealed to the media that some photovoltaic manufacturers treat products used in large power stations differently from those used for channel distribution, in contrast, JA Solar has always been down-to-earth, regardless of large power stations, industrial and commercial power stations or ordinary people's power stations, the quality of supply is the same as always, and dealers choose JA Solar Technology more confidently when promoting products of the same power.
The influence of JA Solar's corporate culture is not only limited to China, it has more than 10 sales and service companies around the world, and the team is spread across five continents, and sincerity, simplicity, awe and gratitude are deeply rooted in the hearts of every foreign employee.
In Africa, expatriate employees say that JA Solar's corporate culture is a source of pride, and basically all customers will like their sincere and humble style. In South Korea, foreign employees can respond to customer needs in real time, which is appreciated by local customers; In Japan, Brazil, the Middle East, Australia...... JA Solar's corporate culture has been widely spread among employees of different nationalities around the world, showing strong penetration, and its image in different countries and markets has reached a striking consensus.
▲Group photo of JA Solar's overseas employees
The leaders of JA Solar have proposed to build the company into a century-old foundation, and corporate culture is undoubtedly the "soul" of this foundation, and it is also the "soul" of the JA Solar brand. It continues to reinforce JA Solar's emotional impression in the global market, which customers can't help but preference.
From technology leadership to sustainable development values, to the company's consistent corporate culture, every step of JA Solar's deployment has effectively empowered its own brand and successfully shaped its industry influence and appeal.
Now, JA Solar is developing more localized development measures for the global market, and plans to further integrate with the local customs and culture of each country. This means that JA Solar has basically completed the stage of building brand awareness around the world and is moving towards a new stage of becoming a "world brand".
In this regard, the Chinese photovoltaic brand represented by JA Solar Technology can be described as a vast world and has a lot to offer!
Text丨Zhong Xinyuan