TÜV Rheinland: steadfast commitment flows from the Rhine River to China
TÜV Rheinland, a member company of AHK Greater China, was founded in 1872 during the first Industrial Revolution, a time when steam and pressure machinery posed significant safety risks. Its story of origin began with a simple idea: employing engineers to ensure machinery safety, which remains its core mission till today.
Over time, TÜV Rheinland expanded to address emerging technologies, from the automobiles in 1900s to elevators, escalators, and today’s challenges in cybersecurity, autonomous driving, and artificial intelligence (AI). Through a course of 150 years, this institution born from boiler inspections has evolved into one of the global leaders in testing, inspection, and certification (TIC) services, spanning frontier sectors like industrial safety, renewable energy, and digital technologies.
“TIC is a big market and a big area, everything you have at home needs testing, and those kind of testing are designed not only to protect people, but also to protect the environment, and this is what we do for a lot of different industry areas,” said Mr. Lutz Frankholz, managing director of TÜV Rheinland Shanghai.
Collective strength: the German Pavilion advantage
TÜV Rheinland entered China in the 1980s, at a time when not many testing and certification companies were doing business in China. Today, it has over 5,600 employees in more than 30 locations across Greater China region.
Having deeply cultivated China’s market for nearly 40 years, TÜV Rheinland is now charting new pathways through the complexities of industrial transformation. The company has advantages in multiple industries, and renewable energy is an important topic at the moment, particularly in wind and solar energy sectors. Given the rapid growth of wind power in China, TÜV Rheinland is presented with both challenges and opportunities.
Alex Zhu, General Manager of TÜV Rheinland Greater China Energy & Environment, noted that the opportunities lie in offshore wind development, digitalization, and the integration of wind with storage and green hydrogen. However, the industry faces challenges such as cost pressures, grid integration, and increasingly complex regulations. There is also a need for more standardized quality and safety benchmarks. TÜV Rheinland is addressing these challenges by providing independent expertise, supporting compliance, and ensuring reliability across the supply chain.
Participating in industry trade fairs is one of the more important marketing activities for TÜV Rheinland, as it provides the insight and opportunity to get in touch with potential customers, as well as to understand the latest market trends, what’s going on, where is the development, and what to develop in the areas.
TÜV Rheinland has been exhibiting through the German Pavilion by AHK Greater China Fair Solutions at trade shows like CHINA WIND POWER (CWP).
“Exhibiting through the German Pavilion gives us stronger visibility under the well-recognized “German quality” brand. It provides access to a collective platform that attracts high-quality visitors, decision-makers, and potential partners. Additionally, the Pavilion offers organizational support and networking opportunities with other German companies, creating synergies that would be more difficult to achieve when participating individually,” noted Mr. Frankholz.
Through the German Pavilion, the company has been able to establish closer ties with both Chinese and international stakeholders who value German expertise in quality and safety. For example, it has helped TÜV Rheinland connect with project developers and investors who prioritize reliable partners, while also gained media exposure and access to official delegations, which strengthen its market presence in China’s wind industry.
Alex Zhu sees significant potential in larger offshore turbines, floating wind technology, and digital solutions such as predictive maintenance and AI-based monitoring. These innovations create new requirements for safety, testing, and certification, opening opportunities for TÜV Rheinland to expand services and help the industry adopt new technologies with confidence.
“Our strategy combines global standards with local expertise. In China, we actively engage with regulators, industry associations, and customers to align our services with evolving requirements. Internationally, we leverage our global network to ensure consistent quality and compliance. By continuously investing in technical competence and innovative services, we adapt quickly to new market demands and regulatory changes, ensuring we remain a reliable partner in the energy transition,” added Mr. Frankholz.
Experience: the human factor
TÜV Rheinland continues to look to China as a very important market where the group has the biggest investment per single country over the past years.
Just in July, TÜV Rheinland Greater China officially unveiled its cutting-edge innovation center – InnoHub in Shanghai. Designed in response to the growing integration of digital transformation and the experience economy, it seeks to drive innovation in emerging fields such as smart cockpit, human-machine interaction, display technologies, acoustic ecosystems, and pet-friendly lifestyles, redefining future mobility and lifestyle paradigms.
Anchored in real-world use scenarios, TÜV Rheinland aims to establish a value loop that integrates technology, experience, and emotion. The facility now operates six specialized labs:
- Smart Cockpit Research Lab
- User Centric Research Lab
- Display Optical Research Center
- Peripheral Ecosystem Innovation Center
- SonicUX Research Lab
- Pet-Friendly Research Lab
TÜV Rheinland’s InnoHub creates a comprehensive innovation ecosystem encompassing research and development, testing, certification, and experience optimization. Moving forward, InnoHub will extend its reach into smart home, multimodal reliability, intelligent infrastructure, service robotics and artificial intelligence, while strengthening joint innovation with industry partners, universities and medical institutions.
Old friends, new horizons
Having been a member with AHKs for a long time, Mr. Frankholz described the relationship between TÜV Rheinland and AHK Greater China as “very good old friends” that know and understand each other very well.
“This long friendship is based on how long we are actually working with AHKs in different countries,” he said. “When we open a new office, we always look for the closer proximity to the German Chamber of Commerce, because we are also feeling as a German company that we want to support actually the German community.”
