Hengtong Group: Technology and Sustainability: A Mutual Pursuit of Hengtong Group's Green Innovation

The Commitment to Build Sustainable Brands proposes that sustainable brands must have social value, environmental value and competitive value in equal measure, requiring enterprises to achieve long term brand building through systems, innovation and governance. As a leading enterprise in the world's optical fiber & optical network and smart grid sectors, Hengtong Group takes technological innovation as its core path, incorporates sustainable development into the main axis of its group strategy, and leverages digitalization, intelligence and green development as key drivers, setting a "Chinese model" for sustainable brand building in the industry.

The key differentiator of Hengtong's sustainable brand lies in its positioning of technological innovation as the core engine driving brand value and green capabilities.

First, it promotes the greening of manufacturing and the leap in resource efficiency through a systematic approach to technological innovation. Hengtong has built 9 national- level green factories, 6 national- level green supply chain management enterprises, and launched 13 categories of national- level green products, achieving a "grand slam" in the green honor system. A particularly representative achievement is the adoption of green silicone optical fiber preform manufacturing technology. Previously held solely by Corning Incorporated of the United States, this process was mastered by Hengtong through independent innovation, which controlled key equipment technologies such as purification, deposition, sintering and annealing, and pioneered the application of silicone D4 in optical fiber preform production in China. Empowered by digitalization, comprehensive energy consumption has been reduced by 27%, and hazardous wastewater emissions have been cut by over 4 million tons annually, transforming core green processes into corporate brand strength.

Second, Hengtong has deeply embedded intelligence into its R&D and manufacturing systems, driving the industry's transition toward digital and green manufacturing. In 2023, Hengtong's intelligent manufacturing workshop for optical fibers and preforms was selected as a global "Lighthouse Factory" by the World Economic Forum, becoming the first case of its kind in the global optical communication industry. Through end- to- end product computing processes, a 100,000- level sensor system and a self- built digital central control platform, the workshop has achieved a 66% increase in output, a 21% reduction in unit manufacturing costs and a 38% growth in per capita output value over three years.

The construction of an intelligent quality control system has also significantly enhanced brand credibility in both the green and quality dimensions: machine learning and multi- modal visual AI have trained models using 8 million sets of production data, building a monthly dynamically iterative prediction system with an accuracy rate exceeding 90%. This has reduced the defect rate of optical fiber parameters by 61% and cut annual quality losses by over 10 million yuan.

Third, Hengtong has further transformed its sustainable innovation capabilities into international brand credibility by joining global authoritative systems. Five of its subsidiaries have joined the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), among which four have obtained "net- zero" certification; some of its enterprises have been awarded EcoVadis Gold Medal and joined the United Nations Global Compact. In the fields of energy efficiency and carbon governance, Hengtong has become one of the first Chinese five- star energy efficiency enterprises and won the ESG Excellent Enterprise Award in the new energy sector.

When the "Commitment to Build Sustainable Brands" was launched at the Palace of Nations in Geneva, Hengtong, as a representative of the first batch of signing enterprises, witnessed the collective commitment of global enterprises alongside peers, and its practices have proven that a sustainable brand is not an enterprise's image project, but a systematic capability embedded in strategy, technology, governance and the global value chain. By promoting green manufacturing and intelligent manufacturing through technological innovation and aligning with international standards, Hengtong is transforming "sustainability" from a single issue into the enterprise's long term competitiveness.