Build engineering-grade, scalable, and mass-produced intelligent unmanned forklifts across all categories.
Recently, Gen-song Intelligent released its performance report for the first three quarters, revealing that the company achieved a revenue of 363 million yuan, representing a year-on-year growth of 46.53%. The performance showed significant growth.
As a one-stop intelligent factory solution provider, Gen-song Intelligent officially debuted on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board (STAR Market) in June 2022, marking the beginning of a new journey post-listing.
In June of this year, Chairman Yao Zhijian of Gen-song Intelligent delivered a message on the company’s first anniversary of going public, reflecting on the past year of development. In the message, he mentioned, “Over the past year, based on advanced ‘5G+AI’ technology and utilizing twin modeling to optimize design solutions, Gen-song Intelligent has established a product positioning for a one-stop intelligent factory solution integrating ‘Automation+Digitalization+Integration+Modeling+Visualization.’ Intelligent handling, as a crucial component of smart factories, serves as an excellent solution to address the ‘last hundred meters’ warehousing issue. Recognizing the vast prospects in this business, the company, while steadily developing system solution services, capitalized on its 18 years of experience in the intelligent manufacturing field. It vigorously expanded its intelligent unmanned forklift business, launching Gen-song Robot to focus on the ‘expansion’ and iteration of a full range of intelligent unmanned forklifts, including those for heavy loads, high lifting, and small maneuverability.”
From the first-anniversary message, it is evident that Gen-song Intelligent, after going public, has placed a greater emphasis on its intelligent unmanned forklift business.
Ten years of tempering, adhering to the innovation drive in the product business
In fact, to better align with its intelligent factory business, Gen-song Intelligent began pioneering the development of vision-guided robots in China as early as 2013. In the same year, the company also developed an intelligent handling system based on robotic technology.
From 2014 to 2018, Gen-song Intelligent established a comprehensive vehicle body research and development project team, focusing on mechanical component research. The company launched a 3-ton laser traction vehicle and independently developed a variety of intelligent unmanned forklifts, including lurking lift trucks, pallet trucks, stackers, counterbalance trucks, omnidirectional forward-moving trucks, flatbed carriers, covering mainstream self-developed models in the market.
In 2019, the company established a research and development center in Shanghai, focusing on core technologies such as positioning and control. It built standard systems such as software productization, hardware product matrix, and modular control. In the same year, it introduced the laser slam navigation AGV product.
In 2020, Gen-song Intelligent founded Gen-song Robot (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd. The first generation of three-way fork AGV was introduced, and the first generation of laser-guided Little Elf AGV was delivered to customers. The company also launched the domestically pioneering “3D Climbing Robot” product.
In 2021, Gen-song Intelligent developed a balance-weight automatic loading system. It became the first in China to develop a 20-ton and 30-ton laser-guided forklift-style AGV for super-heavy loads. This success broke through foreign “neck-and-neck” technological barriers, achieving domestic substitution in the high-precision and cutting-edge field.
In 2022, Gen-song Intelligent comprehensively unveiled the “New Generation Green Intelligent Logistics Robots,” prominently introducing a full range of intelligent unmanned forklifts, including super-heavy loads, high lifting, small flexibility, and narrow aisle capabilities. In the same year, the company completed the in-house development of key components for intelligent unmanned AGVs—the new controller and vision processor.
Wang Dan, Vice General Manager of Gen-song Intelligent, stated that in the future, the company will further advance the research and development and application of AGV products. This initiative aims to assist customers in replacing traditional forklifts with AGVs, collectively creating environmentally friendly and intelligent production logistics. The goal is to gradually increase the market share of AGV products.
Adapting to the new era, enhancing the strength of forklift AGV products
Regarding the product lineup, Wang Dan stated, “Gen-song Intelligent’s current focus is on the intelligent unmanned forklift business. On one hand, the market space for intelligent AGVs is large, with strong development potential. On the other hand, intelligent AGVs complement our intelligent factory business well. In our current intelligent warehousing projects, seven to eight percent of the solutions involve the participation of intelligent AGV products. Intelligent AGVs play a significant role in advancing our intelligent factory business.”
The intelligent transformation of industries has provided a broad application ground for intelligent AGVs. According to data from the CMRA and statistics from the New Strategic Mobile Robotics Industry Research Institute, in the first half of 2023, the sales scale of forklift AGVs in China grew by over 80% year-on-year. This makes it one of the fastest-growing subcategories among all AGV/AMR products.
Chart: Sales Volume (Units) and Growth Rate of the Forklift Mobile Robots Market in China from 2018 to 2022
Chart: Sales Scale (in Billion RMB) and Growth Rate of the Forklift Mobile Robots Market in China from 2018 to 2022
From the birth of the first unmanned forklift to the present, with the continuous development of various technologies, the functions and performance of unmanned forklifts have been constantly improving. However, unmanned forklift manufacturers have not stopped, continuously exploring aspects such as the intelligence and structural form of their products, aiming to create more mature and user-friendly products. Gen-song Intelligent is no exception.
Wang Dan mentioned, “Regarding standardization, we have conducted ongoing research, such as introducing standardized products for certain segmented industries and scenarios. This way, whether in the early manufacturing or later delivery and implementation, efficiency can be further improved.”
For example, Gen-song’s Little Elf AGV adopts a standardized design, further enhancing usability. This product not only has the advantages of being lightweight and small in size but also features pre-set functions for entering elevators and traversing slopes. This makes it efficient for handling scenarios such as multi-floor transportation, stacking in open areas, and narrow aisle handling. Additionally, it has multiple navigation methods, supports multiple system integrations, and boasts strong flexibility and quick deployment.
To better support the development of intelligent unmanned forklift products and reduce costs, Gen-song introduced the universal GS2022100 new controller earlier this year.
With the explosive growth of the autonomous mobile robot market in China, facing the challenges of rapidly increasing business orders, the cumbersome processes and inefficient integration caused by multiple systems and controllers have seriously hindered the scale production of intelligent forklift enterprises.
Drawing on over 30 years of industry experience in intelligent manufacturing, Gen-song Intelligent, combined with its own research and development insights in a full matrix of intelligent vehicle bodies, such as Little Elf, narrow aisle, counterbalance, small forward shift, large forward shift, pallet-type, omnidirectional forward shift, and super-heavy-duty stackers, addressed the issues arising from the transition from non-standard customization to standardized production. After the digitized upgrade from intelligent warehousing to a one-stop intelligent factory, Gen-song Intelligent systematically collected and solved various problems and challenges in smart logistics.
The Gen-song Intelligent universal GS2022100 controller, embedded with a high-performance 8-core processor, stands out for its high performance, high integration, and high reliability. It is suitable for the efficient control and rapid deployment of various intelligent vehicle bodies, providing a streamlined solution for intelligent vehicle manufacturing.
Wang Dan stated that building engineering-grade, scalable, and mass-produced intelligent unmanned forklifts across all categories is the direction Gen-song Robot will focus on in the future. This also represents the primary development path for the entire intelligent unmanned forklift industry in the future.
Strengthening the layout to create a new engine for performance growth
While continuously enhancing product capabilities, Gen-song Intelligent’s market layout is also continuously improving.
After going public, Gen-song Intelligent established a diverse and open business cooperation model for its intelligent unmanned forklift business. This includes various channel agents, strategic cooperation with integrators, and ecosystem partnerships. The company has set up six major offices (Suzhou, Guangzhou, Shenyang, Zhengzhou, Jinan, Chengdu) and subsidiaries nationwide to better promote a localized service system.
In the first half of the year, leveraging the regional offices and subsidiaries, Gen-song targeted and served local customers. It established a strategic customer department to focus on developing large-scale orders, ensuring high order sustainability, and having a significant industry impact with “first-tier” strategic customers. The company optimized the marketing team structure to continually enhance marketing capabilities. It strengthened sales strategy formulation, collected market information, simultaneously conducted maintenance for existing customers and development for new customers, organized project implementation, tracked project management, and provided after-sales services. With high-quality products and efficient services, Gen-song conducted brand promotion through benchmark cases with existing customers and a positive industry reputation, driving accelerated expansion into new customers and application areas.
Thanks to the continuous improvement in market layout, Gen-song’s AGV business achieved substantial growth in the first half of the year, serving leading clients in industries such as metallurgy, casting, and chemicals.
While deeply cultivating the domestic market, Gen-song is also accelerating its expansion into overseas markets. With excellent on-site support technology and remote collaboration capabilities, Gen-song Intelligent has achieved rapid deployment in overseas markets, serving customers in various countries and regions in South Asia, Southeast Asia, South America, and more. Wang Dan mentioned that there is significant demand in foreign markets, but the competition is also intense. Currently, Gen-song Intelligent is focusing on overseas intelligent factories and AGV business. They are continuously deepening their overseas market layout through participation in international exhibitions, direct sales, and overseas agent partnerships.
Looking ahead to the future of Gen-song’s AGV business, Wang Dan is optimistic and expressed, “Although intelligent factories are the company’s main business and have been steadily growing over the years, we hope that the intelligent unmanned forklift business can also shine in the future and continually increase its share of the business. We will further promote the application of our AGV products in the photovoltaic and other new energy industries, accumulate more recognition and support from industry customers, continuously improve the layout of intelligent unmanned forklift business, and develop it into a new engine driving the company forward in the entire industry.”
