A Serbian Brand With a Chinese Factory: What the Official Data on Z&S Bearings’ Structure Shows

Behind the Z&S Bearings brand — marketed as a European manufacturer of bearings for agricultural machinery — lies a complex international structure. We examined the company’s official website, Serbia’s Business Registers Agency (APR), industry publications, and publicly available mapping services to understand how the business is organized and what the numbers reveal.

The Brand’s Structure

According to the company’s official website, the chain looks as follows:

Temerin (the historic head office, the legal entity Živko & Sinovi d.o.o.) → Belgrade (an R&D center, laboratory, and commercial office, opened in 2025) → Srbobran (a production and warehousing complex on the site of the former ŠIPAD factory, which has included a grinding workshop since 2025) → the Z&R–Z&S factory in Linxi County, Hebei Province, China (launched in 2025) → Agrobearings s.r.o. in Komárno, Slovakia (the EU import entity, operating since 2013) → a warehouse in Pocking, Germany → the end customer in Europe.

The company itself openly describes this structure in its “About Us” section — including the fact that the main production facility is located in China, while the Serbian side handles R&D, laboratory testing, and distribution.

A Mismatched Scale

Živko & Sinovi d.o.o. (Temerin), the legal entity serving as the brand’s parent structure, is classified as a small enterprise according to Serbia’s APR registry. Its average headcount has been:

• 2023–11 employees
• 2024–9 employees
• 2025–10 employees

By comparison, the Z&R–Z&S factory in Linxi, according to the company’s own figures, employs around 600 people, with an annual production capacity of 60 million bearing units and a daily output of roughly 100 tons. The plant covers 80,000 m² of production space across seven workshops.

The Temerin facility, listed as the company’s historic head office, is a production and storage annex attached to a private residential property at Đure Jakšića 49.

Financial Trajectory

Financial filings for Živko & Sinovi d.o.o. for 2023–2025 (source: APR, aggregated via CompanyWall) show the following picture:

Total revenue: RSD 92.09 million (2023) → RSD 98.02 million (2024) → RSD 107.97 million (2025)

Net profit: RSD 8.78 million (2023) → RSD 3.87 million (2024) → RSD 0.56 million (2025)

EBITDA: RSD 14.64 million (2023) → RSD 13.43 million (2024) → RSD 6.79 million (2025)

Short-term liabilities: RSD 37.98 million (2023) → RSD 24.42 million (2024) → RSD 491.74 million (2025)

Current ratio: 3.41 (2023) → 4.73 (2024) → 0.36 (2025)

Average gross salary per employee: RSD 105,848 (2023) → RSD 132,759 (2024) → RSD 136,708 (2025)

Revenue grew by roughly 17% over two years, while net profit over the same period fell by nearly a factor of 16. The most striking shift is the near-twentyfold increase in short-term liabilities during 2025, which drove the current ratio down from 4.73 to 0.36 — well below the 1.0 threshold typically regarded as a warning sign of insufficient working capital to cover short-term obligations.

At the same time, the company’s bank accounts are not frozen, it carries no tax arrears, and it is not party to any litigation, according to registry data. The independent agency CompanyWall assigned the company a B+ creditworthiness rating, flagged as “highly speculative, elevated risk with potential for recovery.”

The sharp rise in short-term liabilities coincided in time with the official launch of the Chinese factory in 2025. Available data does not establish a direct causal link between the two events — confirming that would require additional documentation on the structure of these liabilities. Still, the timing of the coincidence merits attention.

Where the Product Actually Comes From

According to an industry publication, the registration of Z&S’s production operation in Linxi County took place on June 17, 2024. The project is valued at $100 million and is structured as a joint venture between the Serbian company Z&S Serbia and the Chinese company Zhongda Bearing Z&R, with support from local authorities in Linxi County. The publication states directly that the Chinese side expects the partnership to strengthen its position in the European bearing market by leveraging the Z&S Bearings brand and its established distribution channels.

The same source cites 1987 as the company’s founding year, whereas the official website and APR records cite different dates: the first lathe purchase in 1982, and the formal registration of Živko & Sinovi as a legal entity on October 15, 1997. This discrepancy between sources is not explained anywhere.

The company also markets products under two brands: Z&S, its core line, and KLT, a more affordable line intended for secondary installations. According to the industry source, Z&S-branded products are manufactured “both at the company’s own facilities and at partner facilities” — wording that implies the Chinese factory is involved in producing the core product line.

What This Means

The available evidence does not support a narrative of deliberate concealment regarding the product’s origin — the company discloses this structure openly on its own website, including the role of Chinese manufacturing. Several questions, however, remain unaddressed publicly:

• How aware are end customers in the EU that products carrying a brand associated with Serbian origin are manufactured at a Chinese factory employing roughly 600 people, while the Serbian legal entity has fewer than 15 employees.
• What exactly the short-term liabilities — which grew nearly twentyfold in 2025 — were used for, and whether they are connected to the investment in the Chinese project.
• What accounts for the discrepancy in the company’s founding date between its official website and industry sources.

Sources: the company’s official website, Serbia’s Business Registers Agency (APR) and the CompanyWall data aggregator, the industry publication bearing-news.com, and Google Maps satellite imagery.