Friedrichshafen, Germany — Later this year, Engel Holding GmbH will open a subsidiary in Vietnam to handle sales and service, an Engel official confirmed at Fakuma 2015 in Friedrichshafen.
Christoph Steger, chief sales officer of the Austria-based maker of injection molding presses and robots, confirmed a published report from the T-Plas trade show, held in late August in Bangkok, Thailand.
Engel will set up the facility in Ho Chi Minh City.
Steger said Engel already has four service technicians in Vietnam — two each in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. But the company needs to open a larger sales and service center that is 100 percent Engel-owned, he said.
“We decided to do this based on our existing structure in Vietnam,” Steger said in response to a question at Engel's Fakuma news conference on Oct. 14.
Engel has two injection molding press plants in China and one plant in South Korea, so it is well placed to serve Vietnam.
Some plastics-intensive businesses are shifting work from China to Vietnam. Samsung, the Korean electronics conglomerate, is setting up a factory for printers in Ho Chi Minh City. Samsung already makes mobile phones in Hanoi.