Here's the company behind the largest single portion of our catalogue, and the one whose name is baked right into its origin story.
From Three People to a Global Presence
CHC Navigation ( CHCNAV ) was founded in 2003 in Shanghai, starting with a team of just three people. The name itself tells you where the company began: "CHC" stands for China HuaCe Corporation, and "HuaCe" roughly translates to "surveying", the exact market founder George Zhao set out to serve from day one.
That focus on affordable, high-precision GNSS equipment for infrastructure work turned out to have enormous room to grow. By 2007, CHCNAV had begun structured international expansion, deliberately putting people on the ground in new markets rather than working through distance alone; a hands-on approach the company credits directly for the trust it built abroad.
Today, CHCNAV operates in more than 140 countries with over 2,000 employees, and is a publicly-listed company.
Owning the Whole Value Chain
What sets CHCNAV apart from a lot of competitors is how much of their own technology stack they actually own - GNSS receivers, LiDAR scanners, inertial sensors, and the software platforms that tie it together, all developed in-house rather than assembled from third-party components. That vertical integration is a big part of how the company has managed to keep pace with - and often outpace - much larger competitors while staying genuinely affordable.
It shows in the range we carry: GNSS receivers spanning from compact everyday RTK units to the visual-LiDAR ViLi i100, the RS series of laser scanners, robotic and manual total stations, machine control systems like the TX-series bringing GNSS guidance directly to construction machinery, and the Apache series of unmanned survey vessels extending that same precision out onto open water.
A Track Record in Serious Projects
CHCNAV's credibility comes from proof - being behind some genuinely significant infrastructure work, including deformation monitoring on China's Donghai Bridge and establishing the country's first large-scale GNSS Continuously Operating Reference Station network. That's the kind of track record that only comes from equipment performing reliably at scale, over years, on projects where failure isn't an option.
What This Means for You
CHCNAV is, in a real sense, the backbone of what makes Tri-Site able to offer such a broad catalogue in the first place - one manufacturer covering GNSS, scanning, total stations, machine control, and marine survey means fewer compatibility headaches and a genuinely joined-up ecosystem, rather than equipment cobbled together from a dozen unrelated brands.