I had the wonderful opportunity of visiting the Hailun Piano Factory located in the city of Ningbo, China. Ningbo is a city of about 8 million people and located about a 3 hour drive south of Shanghai. Mr. Chen Hailun established the Hailun company after purchasing a controlling interest in Ningbo Piano Parts Company where they manufactured piano frames with strings called “strung backs”. In 2000, the vision was forged to create the Hailun Piano Company and build pianos under its own name. 2002 marked the year that piano manufacturing was established and Hailun assembled a development team from around the world to aid in refinement of this new piano.  Frank Emerson, with 32 years as a piano designer, became the chief designer of Hailun pianos while Xinghua Zeng became the chief engineer, with over 30 years of experience in development in engineering and innovation.  Peter Veletzky, 4th generation piano builder became Hailun’s technical advisor while Zlatkovic Sibin, with 20 years of experience at Bösendorfer became Hailun’s tuning director. Ema Shigeru, who worked for Kawai for 30 years became Hailun’s chief inspector and Stephan Paulello became Hailun’s grand piano consultant. Over the next two decades, the transformation of Hailun was explosive. With an initial IPO of $44 million, Hailun piano became part of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Building a state of the art facility (seen below) of 430,000 square feet of manufacturing, the Hailun Piano Company equipped this premises with CNC (computerized controlled) precision equipment. Today, with approximately 800 employees, Hailun Piano produces more than 38,000 pianos annually.

Upright Pianos

Grand Pianos