With factories in Shanghai and Leeds, and sales offices and warehouse facilities in Brazil, Australia and Indonesia, PowerLink was able to secure close working relationships with competitive manufacturing supply chain partners, and gather local market knowledge in order to make its products suitable for customers. It has a network of more than 100 dealers worldwide.

One-fifth of its 500 employees are in research and development and it launches more than 100 new products or updates of existing products each year.

Despite its success today, Yan concedes that PowerLink's development in the UK market was not always smooth. "In the early days of sales from the UK, we found it hard because the market didn't know about us, and we didn't have reference cases," she says.

Fortunately, PowerLink had a UK distributor, which helped it acclimate to the local market. The distributor advised PowerLink on a range of important decisions, from choosing the location for its factory, to constructing the factory, to hiring workers. A senior manager from the distributor acted as PowerLink's consultant and gave Yan's team "lots of great advice and information", she says.

Gradually, PowerLink built a reputation by selling small power generators. "From there we started to sell to larger projects, and now we have established a good industry reputation," Yan says.

One key project for PowerLink in the UK is supplying a biogas combined heat and power generator to a farm in Tadcaster, a market town in North Yorkshire. The farm has a lot of animal and plant waste, which it turns into biofuel. Power-Link's generator helped to turn this biofuel into energy, which the farm uses for its own activities, sharing excess energy with neighbors.

Another example is its supply of a combined heat and power generator to a gym near Liverpool. Initially, the gym was generating electricity and heat through two boilers for its spa and swimming pool. After installing PowerLink's combined heat and power generator, the gym reduced electricity use by half, thanks to the efficiency of the combined heat and power generator.

PowerLink's UK team has also collaborated with the United Nations to supply about 2,000 power generators to refugee camps in Palestine.

"We won the contract based on our excellent technology, design and price. The users gave us very good feedback," Yan says.