SHANGHAI — Kawata Machinery Manufacturing (Shanghai) Co., a Japanese-invested auxiliary equipment manufacturer, opened a new factory on Sept. 8 as the company celebrated its 20th anniversary in China.
The company, which invested 1.3 million yuan ($204,181) in the project, officially began construction of the new factory in January 2014, but the project has been in the works for three years.
The new factory is three times the size of the company's previous three factories and is located in the Xinzhuang Industrial Zone, covering an area of 19,230 square meters. There are four main buildings including an R&D center, an assembly workshop, semi-finished and finished products processing factories and service workshops. The plant was built to be a low-carbon-emission and energy-efficient facility.
Director and standing deputy general manager Wang Rui Xiang said the new plant will focus on technology development, quality management, and increasing production efficiency. The company, with annual sales of 300 million yuan (about $47 million), plans to increase staff by about 10 percent.
With the new factory, production capacity has more than doubled and Kawata Shanghai has become the Kawata Group's largest overseas production base. According to Wang, it will assume the responsibility for development, production, sales, service and overseas markets for the whole company.