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Your purchasing office in China.
SBCCO-China works as an extension of your sourcing department: an approved supplier base, supplier development, a quality approval system, material follow-up and export logistics — for water and gas treatment, chemical processing, mining, smelting, power, cement and general industrial equipment. USA-majority-owned, based in Shijiazhuang, buying in China since 2006. You keep the specification and the relationship. We do the part that needs somebody standing in the shop.
01 / The problem
The saving you negotiated in China is usually lost after the purchase order.
Price is the easy part. A competent buyer can get a competitive number out of a Chinese factory from a desk anywhere in the world. What is hard to do from ten thousand kilometres away is everything that happens next.
The order goes to a shop that quotes your item but has never built it. A welder is qualified for the wrong process and nobody checks the certificate. The schedule slips quietly for three weeks and you are told at the end of the fourth. The material certificates arrive and do not match the heat numbers on the plate. The crate fails at the port because it was built for a truck, not a ship.
None of that shows up in the quotation. All of it shows up in your delivered cost, and by the time it does, the saving is gone and your plant is waiting.
02 / The function
What a purchasing office actually does for you.
This is the work a sourcing department would do itself if it had people living in the country. We do it under your specification, your approval and your purchase order.
Approved supplier base
Shops that have built your item beforeNot a directory of factories that say yes. A working list of shops we have audited, placed work with and watched perform — recorded by what each one has actually delivered, in what material, to what code and at what size.
Supplier development
Making a good shop able to build your partMost Chinese shops can build to a drawing. Fewer can build to your standard, your documentation and your packing. Development is the slow work of closing that gap on a shop that is worth the effort — and of walking away from one that is not.
Quality approval system
Written before steel is cutInspection and test plan, hold points, witness points, welding procedures, coating specification and acceptance criteria — agreed with you and with the shop before production starts, so an argument at the final inspection is an argument about a document, not about opinions.
Material follow-up
Expediting, in personSomebody physically in the shop, on a schedule you can see, reporting what is really happening rather than what the sales office says is happening. Including the news you would rather hear early than late.
Documentation
Compiled as it is madeMaterial certificates, WPS, PQR and welder qualifications, NDT and dimensional reports, coating records, test results. Collected at the point they are produced and audited into a data book your client can sign off — not chased after the equipment has shipped.
Export and logistics
To the port and beyondExport packing specified for the journey, consolidation across several shops into one shipment, heavy lift and break-bulk where the piece will not fit a container, and the documents customs actually asks for.
03 / How it runs
From your category list to the crate on the quay.
Eight steps. You approve at every point where money or specification is committed.
We read your category list and tell you where we are useful
Some categories we can source, develop and control end to end. Some we can source once a shop is qualified. Some we should only buy, inspect and expedite, because the source is a brand you have already chosen. We will tell you which is which before you commit to anything.
We shortlist shops that have built the item before
Not a shop that builds “vessels” — a shop that has built that vessel, in that material, at that size, to that code.
We audit before any work is placed
Equipment list, welder qualifications, NDT capability, calibration records, past work of the same type, and the state of the floor. You get a go or a no-go with the reasons written down, and you are welcome to come with us.
We put your specification into the shop’s language
A specification written for a North American or European fabricator does not survive translation on its own. We restate it in Chinese engineering terms, keep the original as the governing document, and make the shop sign the restatement.
We agree the ITP and the hold points before steel is cut
Everyone signs the same inspection and test plan — you, us and the shop. After that, an inspection is a check against an agreed document rather than a negotiation.
We are in the shop while it is being built
In-process surveillance on a schedule you can see, with photographs. Coordination of third-party inspection where your client requires TÜV, BV, ABS or your own inspector.
We compile the data book as it is made
Every certificate collected at the moment it exists. A data book assembled after shipment is a data book with holes in it.
We pack, consolidate, ship — and report every month
One consolidated shipment where it makes sense, export packing specified for the journey, and a monthly report covering every open order: where it is, what has moved, what has not, and what we are doing about it.
04 / The supplier list
How a shop gets on our list, and how it comes off.
A shop enters on evidence: an audit, a reference we called ourselves, and a first order small enough that being wrong about them is survivable. It stays on the list by performing — and the record we keep is per item, not per company, because a shop that is excellent at pressure vessels may be ordinary at machined shafts.
Audits are repeated. A shop that was good three years ago may have lost its welding engineer, changed owner, or taken on more work than its floor can hold. We re-audit before we place work again, not after something has gone wrong.
Shops come off the list for the reasons you would expect — quality that does not recover after being told twice, schedules that slip without warning, documents that turn out to be decorative. They also come off for one you might not expect: offering us a commission.
05 / Ways to work together
Five models. One of them applies to a given item, and it is agreed before the order.
Which one fits depends on how much of the work you want to keep. Commercial terms are quoted per category once we understand the scope — there is no standard rate that would mean anything before that conversation.
Inspection and expediting only
Fixed fee · no marginYou place your own orders and keep your own suppliers. We are your eyes in the factory: audits, surveillance, expediting, pre-shipment inspection, data books. This is the easiest way to start, and for some buyers it is the whole relationship.
Buyer’s agent
Fee paid by you, in writingWe source, qualify, negotiate and control on your behalf. The factory invoices you directly and you see what the equipment actually costs. Our fee comes from you and from nobody else, and that is written into the agreement.
Dedicated sourcing office
RetainerA named team working your categories continuously — supplier development, approvals, follow-up and reporting — as a function of your sourcing department rather than a series of transactions. For buyers who want capacity in China, not a broker.
Single-counterparty supply
We buy and sell · margin in the priceOne contract, one invoice, one company carrying the risk. Simplest for your accounts payable, and honest about what it is: the margin sits in the price and we say so, rather than calling it a purchasing office.
Savings share
Add-on to model 2 or 3Where you have a baseline cost you trust, part of our compensation can be tied to the reduction against it, measured on delivered cost rather than unit price. It only works when both sides agree the baseline first.
06 / What we put in writing
Two commitments, because they are the two things a category manager is actually worried about.
We are never paid by both sides on the same item.
One model per commodity, declared in writing before the purchase order. If we act as your agent on an item, we take no commission, rebate or kickback from the factory on that item — and you may ask to see the factory’s quotation. If we buy and sell an item instead, we say so plainly and the margin is in the price.
A shop that offers us a commission comes off our list. That is not a slogan; it is the only way the first sentence stays true.
We will not claim a perfect record.
We have had quality problems. Anyone who has built several hundred projects in China and tells you otherwise is either new or not being straight with you. What we will tell you is what happened, what it cost, and what changed in the procedure afterwards.
The commitment worth making is not that nothing will go wrong. It is that you hear it from us first, while there is still time to do something about it.
07 / Starting
The first ninety days, deliberately small.
Nobody should hand a purchasing function to a company they have not worked with. So the sensible opening is narrow enough to judge properly.
Pick three categories. Ideally one we can source and develop, one where a source already exists and needs controlling, and one that has given you trouble.
Place one trial order. Small enough that being wrong is survivable, real enough that everything gets exercised — audit, ITP, surveillance, data book, packing, shipment.
Read the monthly report. Every open order, what moved, what did not, and what we are doing about it.
Review at ninety days against the delivered cost and the dates, not against the quotation. Then decide whether to widen it, change the model, or stop.
Send us your category list.
Tell us what you buy and where it hurts. We will come back with where we are useful, where we are not, and what the first ninety days would look like.