Selling Air Compressors and Energy-Saving Retrofits to Factories: 62,000 Factories with 100+ Insured Employees in 7 Heavy Compressed-Air Industries, 80% Operating 10+ Years

Lao Sun has sold screw air compressors in Ningbo for eight years. Most of his past orders came from new factories building a compressed-air station, or from old machines breaking down and customers coming to him. This year his company had him start selling compressed-air station energy-saving retrofits. He took a brochure to pitch it, and quite a few owners said the same thing: "The machine works fine — why retrofit it?" He then changed his opening: he'd first ask how many air compressors, how many shifts, and what last month's electricity bill was, then calculate it for the owner on the spot. Noticeably more owners were willing to keep talking. What trips him up now is a different problem: where are the factories where this math is worth doing, and where does the list come from.

Where to find the list: the 7 types of factories that use the most compressed air

I picked 7 types of factories on Tianxia Gongchang that use the most compressed air: plastics and rubber products; textiles; metal products and machining (including metal products, general-purpose equipment, and special-purpose equipment); auto parts; electronics; food, beverage, and pharma (including agricultural and food processing, food manufacturing, alcohol/beverage/tea, and pharmaceutical manufacturing); and glass and ceramics (including glass, glass products, and ceramic products). Among active factories, 115,183 have 50+ insured employees, 61,782 have 100+ insured employees, and 18,629 have 300+ insured employees.

Broken down by industry (a single factory can belong to two industries at once, so the industry totals add up to more than the overall total):

Where the air actually gets used differs by industry: for plastics and rubber, it's blow molding, injection-molded part ejection, and pneumatic fixtures; for textiles, it's weft insertion on air-jet looms; for metal products and machining, it's pneumatic tools, sandblasting, spray coating, and blowing chips off machine tools; for auto parts, it's pneumatic tightening, spray coating, and air-tightness testing; for electronics, it's pick-and-place equipment, pneumatic fixtures, and blow-off cleaning; for food, beverage, and pharma, it's bottle blowing, filling, and packaging — compressed air that touches the product has strict oil-content requirements, so many factories use oil-free compressors; for glass and ceramics, it's bottle forming and glazing.

Electronics factories tend to be larger overall: of the 11,879 with 100+ insured employees, 4,584 have 300+ insured employees — 38.6%, the highest share of the 7 industries.

Why start with factories that have 100+ insured employees and have operated for 10+ years

An August 2018 China Economic Herald report, reposted on the National Development and Reform Commission's official website, states that air compressors account for 8.7% of industrial energy consumption, that China's air compressors use about 300 billion kWh of electricity a year, and that more than 40% of that energy is wasted on mismatched loads on the power equipment, poorly configured supply piping networks, and unrefined air use at the end-use equipment. This figure is from a 2018 report and doesn't name the organization that calculated it, so cite the source and the year when you put it in a proposal.

These three points map directly onto the three things an energy-saving retrofit can sell:

1. Mismatched load: Air compressors are sized for peak air demand, so most of the time they're not run at full capacity; a fixed-frequency compressor keeps switching between loaded and unloaded states, and it still draws power while unloaded. This maps onto variable-frequency drive retrofits and multi-compressor coordinated control.
2. Poorly configured piping: As a plant expands phase by phase, pipe is added section by section, leading to large pressure drops and many leak points; when end-use pressure isn't enough, the fix is usually to raise the outlet pressure instead. This maps onto leak detection, piping-network rework, and lower-pressure operation.
3. Unrefined end-use air: Using compressed air to blow metal shavings, blow off workpieces, or cool people down. This maps onto end-use retrofits and air-use management.

Before you get someone on the phone, the only visible signals are scale and age. Larger factories have more equipment and more shifts, so they also have more air compressors and more running hours — and that's what makes the electricity savings big enough to cover the cost of the retrofit. Of the 61,782 factories with 100+ insured employees, 49,967 (80.9%) have operated for 10+ years. A factory that's been running for a decade has usually expanded its plant more than once, its air compressors are often bought in batches over time and run as an old-and-new mix, and its piping network has been extended workshop by workshop — so it tends to have all three of the problems above.

The current national energy-efficiency standard for air compressors is GB 19153-2019, Minimum Allowable Values of the Energy Efficiency and Energy Efficiency Grades for Positive Displacement Air Compressors, published by the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Standardization Administration of China on December 31, 2019, and effective from July 1, 2020. According to the public draft-for-comment version of this standard on the China National Institute of Standardization's official website, energy efficiency is split into 3 grades, with Grade 1 the highest and Grade 3 the minimum allowable value. At a factory that's been operating for 10+ years, the station may still have machines bought before 2020 — check the manufacture date on the nameplate to find out.

The Implementation Plan for Promoting Equipment Renewal in the Industrial Sector, issued in March 2024 by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and six other departments, lists boilers, motors, transformers, refrigeration/heating air compressors, heat exchangers, and pumps together as key energy-using equipment, and calls for pushing equipment replacement and promoting energy-saving equipment rated Grade 2 or above. The document specifically names "refrigeration/heating air compressors" as this sub-category — when you cite it to a customer, stick to that exact wording and don't broaden it to all air compressors.

Where the factories are: Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang together account for close to half

Ranked by province, of the 61,782 factories with 100+ insured employees, Guangdong has 12,734, Jiangsu has 9,989, and Zhejiang has 7,954; the three provinces together total 30,677, or 49.7%. Next come Shandong with 4,524, Anhui with 2,482, Sichuan with 2,284, and Fujian with 2,187.

Compressed-air station retrofits require an on-site survey, installation, and after-sales service, so it's more practical to rank cities by region cluster:

• Suzhou-Wuxi-Changzhou plus Shanghai: Suzhou 3,484, Wuxi 1,483, Changzhou 1,072, Shanghai 2,063 — 8,102 total.
• Pearl River Delta: Dongguan 3,139, Shenzhen 2,647, Foshan 1,376, Guangzhou 1,169 — 8,331 total.
• Zhejiang: Ningbo 1,721, Hangzhou 1,151, Jiaxing 1,078, Taizhou 936 — 4,886 total.
• The west and the north: Chongqing 1,369, Chengdu 1,149, Tianjin 1,029.

Suzhou, Dongguan, and Shenzhen together total 9,270 factories, 15.0% of the overall count.

The five things to ask clearly on the first call

1. How many air compressors, and what's the total power rating

Ask how many units, the power rating of each, the model, and how many years since purchase. Total power determines the order of magnitude of the electricity bill and is the first number you need for the calculation later. Whoever can answer this is usually the person in the equipment department or the power section who manages the compressed-air station — that's the user department you're looking for.

In my experience, at the 43,153 factories with 100 to 299 insured employees, whether to do the retrofit is still mostly the owner's call; at the 18,629 factories with 300+ insured employees, it's usually the equipment department that raises the need, with procurement and finance following up. Some factories would rather pay as a share of the electricity saved (energy performance contracting) — ask about this before quoting a price. For who raises the need and who makes the call, see Lesson 6 of the methodology: Who Actually Calls the Shots at a Factory — Map the Decision Chain Before You Call.

2. What's the operating air pressure

Ask what the outlet pressure is set to, and what the highest pressure required by any piece of equipment on the shop floor is. The bigger the gap between the two, the more it shows either a large pressure drop in the piping network, or that the whole station's pressure has been raised just to satisfy a handful of pieces of equipment — and that gap is your opening for the retrofit.

3. How many shifts, and does it stop on weekends

Running hours directly determine the electricity bill. For the same air compressor, single-shift production versus continuous three-shift production can differ by up to three times in annual running hours.

4. Has it done variable-frequency drives, has it done waste-heat recovery

Factories that have done neither have the most room for improvement; for ones that already have variable-frequency drives, shift the conversation to the piping network, coordinated control, and end-use. For waste-heat recovery, also ask whether the factory has anywhere that uses hot water, such as a cleaning process, dormitories, or the canteen.

5. The past 12 months' electricity bills, and whether the compressed-air station has its own separate meter

The electricity bill gives you the full year's power consumption, the electricity cost, and the average electricity price; for a factory with a separate meter, you can see at a glance how much power the compressed-air station uses. The peak-valley time-of-use breakdown on that same bill is also what C&I energy storage salespeople look at — the two of you can refer customers to each other. See How to Find Factory Customers for Commercial and Industrial Energy Storage Sales.

A sequence you can run right away

1. Narrow to a region cluster first: from Suzhou-Wuxi-Changzhou plus Shanghai, the Pearl River Delta, and Zhejiang, pick the range where you can actually do on-site testing and after-sales service.
2. Then narrow to industry and size: on Tianxia Gongchang, filter by the 7 industries plus insured headcount — start with 100+ insured employees and 10+ years in operation, for example the 7 industries' factories in Suzhou with 100+ insured employees and 10+ years in operation. Over 3 million factories on Tianxia Gongchang come with direct contact details for the owner or decision-maker — check "decision-maker contact details: yes" and you can go straight to the person who makes the call at factories with 100 to 299 insured employees.
3. Prepare an opening line by industry: for textile mills, ask how many air-jet looms are running; for plastics factories, ask how many blow-molding and injection-molding machines they have; for food and pharma factories, ask whether they use oil-free compressors. For the method, see Lesson 5 of the methodology: The First 15 Seconds of the Call — Open with a Signal, Not a Cold Pitch.
4. On the call, ask only the five things: unit count and power, air pressure, shifts, VFD and waste-heat recovery, and the electricity bill.
5. Bring the calculation sheet to the visit: work the numbers from the nameplate and the electricity bill face to face — see the method in the next section.

You can also just ask the AI on Tianxia Gongchang something like "Dongguan plastic-products factories and electronics factories with 100+ insured employees", and it will break the criteria down into filters and list the factories.

Oil-injected screw compressors need regular oil changes, so compressed-air station salespeople and industrial lubricant salespeople are working the same set of factories — see How to Find Factory Customers for Industrial Lubricant Sales.

A calculation you can do on the spot

Once you have the customer's air compressor nameplate and the past 12 months' electricity bills, four steps are enough to finish the calculation right there in the customer's office. For any number that's an estimate, say plainly to their face that it's an assumption.

Step 1, estimate the compressed-air station's annual electricity consumption: total nameplate rated power (kW) × running hours per day × running days per year × average load factor. Ask the customer for the load factor or observe the loaded-running time on site; if you can't pin it down, calculate with an assumed value first. If there's a separate meter, just use the consumption shown on it.

Step 2, calculate the average electricity price: annual electricity cost ÷ annual electricity consumption — both numbers are on the electricity bill.

Step 3, calculate the compressed-air station's annual electricity cost and check it: annual consumption × average price. If this comes out higher than the whole factory's annual electricity bill, or takes up most of it, the running hours or load factor were estimated too high — go back and ask again.

Step 4, calculate how much money each percentage point of savings is worth, then calculate the payback period.

For example — every number below is an assumption: 3 air compressors with a nameplate power of 75 kW each, running two shifts for 16 hours a day, 300 days a year, an average load factor of 75%, and an average electricity price of 0.65 yuan/kWh.

• Annual electricity consumption = 3 units × 75 kW × 16 hours × 300 days × 75% = 810,000 kWh
• Annual electricity cost for the compressed-air station = 810,000 × 0.65 = 526,500 yuan
• Every 1% of electricity saved is worth 5,265 yuan a year
• Let s be the percentage-point savings the on-site test confirms (enter 20 for a 20% saving), and let I be the retrofit investment in yuan; payback period = I ÷ (5,265 × s) years

Use s from an on-site test or your company's measured data from similar past projects — don't plug in a number from a brochure. Once this sheet is worked out, what the owner sees is his own factory's electricity bill.

→ Filter the 7 industries that use the most compressed air, with 100+ insured employees, on Tianxia Gongchang | → Get a Tianxia Gongchang membership

Published by the Tianxia Gongchang Research Institute. Data notes: factory counts are from Tianxia Gongchang, covering active manufacturing factories, as of September 2026; air compressor energy-consumption data is from a China Economic Herald report reposted on the National Development and Reform Commission's official website (August 2018); the publication and effective dates of GB 19153-2019 are from the National Public Service Platform for Standards Information; the energy-efficiency grade breakdown is from the public draft-for-comment version of this standard on the China National Institute of Standardization's official website (before the standard's formal publication in 2019); the equipment-renewal policy is from the Implementation Plan for Promoting Equipment Renewal in the Industrial Sector, issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and six other departments (MIIT document Gongxinbulian Gui [2024] No. 53, March 27, 2024).