“Here are high-speed train seats manufactured by our company. Now I’ll burn this seat,” Han Peng, General Manager of Qingdao Meilai Rail Company, told reporters at the company’s showroom on August 8.

Han was conducting a fire-proof experiment, using a methane gun’s flame to burn a seat in front of him until its surface became fiery-red.

“Don’t worry,” Han smiled.

A fire-proof experiment in Qingdao Meilai Rail Company [Photo/Qingdao Today]

A synthetic new material developed by the company reached the world's rail transport industry’s highest standard for fire-proofing.

Han’s company, located in Lancun Town, Jimo District, Qingdao, engages in R&D and manufacturing of airplane and train seats. It has garnered a great deal of attention for making scientific innovations in the supply of products ranging from cabinets on China’s next-generation high-speed trains, the Fuxing, to the sleeping berths of new-type high-speed trains.

Three kilometers south of Lancun, Jihongtan, dubbed "Qingdao's high-speed train town", is growing ever faster.

Meilai is just one of the companies in Lancun profiting from Jihongtan's high-speed train manufacutring by supplying smart products for high-speed trains.

In Meilai’s showroom, a seat with its back able to change from a sitting position to a lying position is very eye-catching.

“The newly operational D311 trains use this type of seats,” said Han.

The seats, developed in 2014, was given a trial use in 2016. They passed a 300,000-kilometer test this year and thus are qualified for mass installation, making Meilai Chinese mainland’s first private business to manufacture high-speed train seats convertible from siting to lying positions.

Meilai engages primarily in R&D, manufacturing and sales of seats, sleeping berths and interior decorations for high-speed trains and traditional passenger trains. It has a portfolio of sixty-odd kinds of products belonging to the five major categories of high-speed train seats, driver seats, seats on 25.5-meter-long trains, dining car seats and subway train seats.

“Our company manufactured 50 percent of the sleeping berths used on the new-type high-speed trains operational recently,” said Han. “The seat covers on China’s indigenous large aircraft C919 were also supplied by us.”

Meilai is Qingdao’s first enterprise to have received both IRIS and AS9100 certificates and Recaro’s first Chinese strategic partner.