TAIPEI, TAIWAN — Despite intellectual-property brigands, Taiwan's Shini Plastics Technologies Inc. is zestfully pursuing the enormous Chinese market for plastics auxiliary equipment.
Corporate president Kenny C. J. Wu said a new $6 million factory in Chongquing will employ 100 when it opens later this year. The wholly owned factory, in western Sichuan province, will be Shini's fourth in China, joining those in Ningbo, Dongguan and Pinghu, plus one in Taiwan.
China comprises about 40 percent of Shini's worldwide sales, with the remainder split evenly among the rest of Asia, Europe and the Americas.
Wu spoke at Shini's booth at the Taipei Plas trade show, where the company highlighted its new ST3 line of robots.
Shini also exhibited an expansive line of auxiliary production equipment, dosers, blenders, granulators, driers and coolers.
Wu was especially bullish on the U.S. market, thanks to a 40,000-square-foot warehouse and service center that opened in Suwanee, Ga., near Atlanta to handle sales and service of Shini robots and hot runners.
Earlier this year, Shini cut the ribbon on a 173,000-square-foot factory in Pune, India, a venture with its Indian distributor.
Shini's financial offices remain in Taiwan but product development takes place in Dongguan, a manufacturing hotbed on the Pearl River Delta. “Our technical headquarters is in China,” Wu said.
This year's worldwide sales are expected to hold constant at about $75 million.
The company has retained mainland legal counsel to pursue IP pirates selling fraudulently branded Shini machinery. Still, Wu expressed optimism about limiting the financial damage. “Now, it's less and less,” he said.