Zoomlion – or ‘Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science and Technology Co’ to refer to it by its full title – is a Chinese manufacturer of machinery (mainly construction equipment).
It claims to be the world’s sixth largest and China’s largest construction machinery company. In 2008, for example, it acquired CIFA – then the world’s third largest concrete machinery manufacturer. At the time, that was reputed to be the largest ever European acquisition by a Chinese company.
Agricultural machinery
Nowadays, Zoomlion operates in five sectors: construction machinery; agricultural machinery; heavy trucks; environmental activities; and financial services. It encompasses several brand-names, including the ‘Zoomlion‘ trade-mark.
The agricultural machinery division appears to be growing; it manufactures not only tractors but also harvesters and implements.
At the smaller end of the tractor line-up is the likes of the 30hp RD304. There are umpteen models charting a path up to the existing 120hp RS1204.
In recent years, the company has embarked on the manufacture of much larger tractors – as is evident from this video footage (below). Alas, the narration is not in English!
Increasingly, the company is embracing more radical styling cues. The latest-generation tractors are nothing if not eye-catching, as this picture (below) shows.
Image source: AgriMacFan
Zoomlion also markets a variety of harvesting machines. Its combine harvesters are typically smaller than flagship machines produced here in Europe or, indeed, the US.
This video footage (below) shows a fleet of machines busily toiling away. As well as combines for cereal crops, Zoomlion also builds machines for harvesting sugarcane and rice.
The company even has a pair of self-propelled foragers in its arsenal; the larger of the two (pictured below) is a somewhat imposing-looking beast. 
Founded in 1992, Zoomlion now sells 49 different product lines – amounting to nearly 800 different products (though construction equipment accounts for many of these).
It was China’s first construction machinery company to be listed on both the Shenzhen and Hong Kong stock exchanges.
It has 14 manufacturing sites dotted about China, plus five “industrial and technological parks” abroad – in Italy, Germany, India, Brazil and Belarus.
Will we see more of this sprawling entity here in western Europe – and perhaps even Ireland – in future? Only time well tell…
