Shanghai High Pressure Container Factory, with assets of 170 million yuan (US$20 million), was saddled with a debt of 110 million yuan (US$13.3 million) when it was sold last year to the privately owned Shanghai Huasheng Enterprises Group.

In the first half of this year, its sales surpassed 100 million yuan (US$12 million), up 20.9 per cent compared with the same period last year, with about 40,000 containers produced monthly.

Huasheng President Jiang Ziqiang said the factory, which has been renamed Shanghai High Pressure Container Co Ltd, will raise its high pressure containers to 1 million units within three years.

"Our ambition is to become the world's largest high pressure container seller," he said.

The factory epitomizes the many State-owned light industry enterprises in the city, said Zhang Liping, chairman of the board of Shanghai Light Industry Holding Company (Group) (SLIC).

To date, 70 per cent of its 1,000 State-owned light industry factories, with assets of less than 5 million yuan (US$600,000) each, have been shut down and 30 per cent sold to private investors, Zhang said.

Some of SLIC's nine listed companies and some of its subsidiaries will soon be privately owned.

But he also said enterprises with assets of 500 million yuan (US$600,000) to 1 billion yuan (US$120 million) each will face some difficulties going private.

"They are too big," he said. "Profitable assets will be retreated from them and turned into new listed companies. The remaining assets will be sold."

SLIC has benefited from ownership reform, which enabled its profits to increase by 20 per cent between January and June.

(China Daily August 6, 2002)