(Yicai Global) May 29 -- Vietnam surpassed China to become the largest exporter of household vacuum cleaners to the United States in February, according to new figures. But industry insiders believe that the core of the industrial chain will remain in China.

The US imported nearly 1.4 million household vacuum cleaners from Vietnam in February, up 54 percent from a year earlier, versus almost 1.3 million from China, statistics from the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products showed.

The surge in US imports of vacuum cleaning products made in Vietnam is due to the relocation of their manufacture to the Southeast Asian country amid the impact of US tariff hikes on China-made products since 2018.

Last year, China exported 42.1 million vacuum cleaners to the United States, accounting for 52.2 percent of the country’s total imports, falling from 46.5 million, or 75.2 percent of the total, in 2020, according to the CCCME.

Meanwhile, US imports of household vacuum cleaners from Vietnam have gradually climbed since 2018. Those exported from the country to the US accounted for 24.8 percent of the total last year, about double the figure of 2020, the CCCME data showed.

Major Chinese makers of vacuum cleaners such as Kingclean Electric and Ningbo Fujia Industrial, began building plants in Vietnam in 2018. Kingclean and Fujia are contract manufacturers of well-known European and US brands, including Electrolux, Dyson, and Stanley Black & Decker.

Kingclean’s Vietnamese unit lifted its investment in the country to USD40 million from USD7 million, according to its parent company’s 2021 earnings report. Fujia’s annual production capacity in Vietnam will likely reach 1.2 million to 1.5 million units this year, it predicted.

“The vacuum cleaner industrial chain is mature,” a manager at a Chinese cleaning appliances firm told Yicai Global, adding that some foreign brands outsource manufacturing. “As long as there is a mature management system, producing in Vietnam can meet the quality requirements.”

Vietnam is not the only Southeast Asian country where vacuum cleaner production bases were moved following US-China trade frictions in 2018. Cleaning robot developer iRobot moved its plants to Malaysia and Dyson to Singapore and Malaysia.

“IRobot had its reasons to build a new factory in Malaysia,” a manager at Narwal Robotics, a Chinese smart cleaning equipment supplier, told Yicai Global. “We still believe in the competitiveness of the domestic industrial ecology, including a mature capacity guarantee system, a flexible and responsive supply chain advantage, and an effective cost control system.”

China’s industrial ecology is far richer than those of Vietnam or Malaysia, the person added, noting that China’s Pearl River Delta region has a well-developed supporting industrial chain and a very strong ability to quickly promote products.

“Large Chinese companies still produce domestically because there is a mature industrial ecology and system in China,” the person noted. “Only some labor-intensive links were transferred abroad, not the core manufacturing.

“We believe that the core of the industrial ecology of cleaning appliances’ smart manufacturing is in China, as the country has accrued talent, technologies, and ecological advantages,” he added.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione