Chinese injection molder Mehow Innovation Ltd. was firmly ensconced in the medical device manufacturing market when it decided it needed to branch out.
It was 2011, and the Shenzhen-based firm was facing more and more intense competition in its traditional thermoplastics molding market and searching for a competitive advantage.
The midsized company, with a few hundred employees, was starting to see more requests from customers for liquid silicone rubber — a material it wasn't very familiar with at the time — and decided that could be a good direction, said Feng Yuan, director of business development
It was not an easy journey, but six years later, the company has 22 LSR injection molding machines and the material accounts for about 25 percent of its business, Yuan said.
"At the beginning, there was a lot of failure but we didn't give up," Yuan said. "Actually, we spent two years doing research and having so many trials."
Yuan spoke to LSR World at Mehow's booth at the Chinaplas trade fair, held May 16-19 in Guangzhou. He described the company's journey from thermoplastics into the LSR sector, where today it manufactures parts for global device makers including Australia's Cochlear Ltd. and China's Mindray Medical International Ltd.