Recently, ZPMC signed the contract on designing and manufacturing 16 sledges with Polar Research Institute of China, indicating the first step of ZPMC for the south polar project and a new business field of the Company.
The Antarctic has the deep development potentials and high strategic importance. Therefore, ZPMC Military-civil Integration Department started projects of Antarctic construction in last April and established the sound cooperation with Polar Research Institute of China. The sledge project is the first step in the Antarctic construction of ZPMC. The increasing inland scientific expedition in Antarctic requires more and more transportation equipment. It’s difficult for the quantities and types of present inland sledges to meet the application requirements. Meanwhile, the sledges are heavy, difficult for maintenance and easy to wear, causing high maintenance costs, an obstacle for further development of the inland expedition in Antarctic. Polar Research Institute of China made public tendering for sledges with high application efficiency, low manufacturing costs and easy component replacement.
The project team of ZPMC started the design of sledge at the beginning of August and won the contract with sound reputation and detailed design program of ZPMC. Then the team deepened the design and manufactured the sledges immediately. The Project involves 16 sledges of 4 types, namely, common sledge, oil tank sledge, large sledge and oil flexible tank sledge, of which the common sledge and oil tank sledge are optimized on the basis of present sledges. The large sledge and flexible tank sledge are initialized in China, filling in the blank of such product.
The sledges are planned to delivered and shipped on Oct 20th and 16 sledges will be loaded into Xuelong Icebreaker to the Antarctic, providing transportation on the icecap for the phase two construction of Taishan Station by the 35th Antarctic Expedition Team. Meanwhile, ZPMC has won a quota of the team to send a senior technician to the Antarctic, to complete the construction of terminal, environment survey as well as assessment on the integration program of transportation, construction and installation of the new station.
ZPMC has been focusing on related technical R&D and reserve on the construction and development of the Antarctic, contributing to protect the Antarctic with reasonable application of resources and to promote China into a polar power.