Nypro Inc. said it will close its plant in Guangzhou, China, and move production about 100 miles to its plant in Shenzhen. The consolidation is expected to be completed by February.
The Clinton, Mass.-based company is “consolidating to fewer, larger, full-service manufacturing operations” that will give it “greater scope and scale,” said Nelson Ngai, group vice president of Nypro's consumer and electronics businesses.
All of the roughly 1,000 workers at Guangzhou have been offered opportunities to relocate to either Shenzhen or Nypro's two other Chinese plants at Suzhou and Tianjin, the company said.
When the consolidation is complete, Nypro Shenzhen, which currently has 3,000 employees, will have 120 injection molding machines with 35-500 tons of clamping force. It currently has about 70 presses.
The Shenzhen and Guangzhou plants both make products for consumer and household goods and the electronics industries, as well as some health-care products. The Shenzhen plant primarily makes wireless products, while Guangzhou has made a greater variety of electronic products.
The Shenzhen plant, with 460,000 square feet of space, is nearly three times as large as the 160,000-square-foot Guangzhou plant. Nypro said zoning changes creating residential areas around the Guangzhou site “limited the ability to expand the facility.”
White room manufacturing at Guangzhou will be relocated to a 100,000-square-foot clean room in Shenzhen. About 25 percent of that clean room space at Shenzhen is dedicated to molding, and the rest is used for painting and assembly.
Nypro Tianjin employs 5,000 and Nypro Suzhou, 1,500 — making current Nypro employment in China more than 10,000. All three of Nypro's plants in China are ISO 13485-certified and offer injection molding, mold building, decoration and assembly.
“This is a big positive step for Nypro as we enhance fully integrated molding/assembly facilities across the industrial landscape of China,” said a company spokesman.
Copyright 2009 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved.