In February MULTIVAC signed an investment agreement to establish a new production company in Taicang in China. The new production facility will enable MULTIVAC in future to react to the requirements of customers in China with even greater speed and focus. The production of packaging machines and their peripheral components is planned for the new site. In addition to manufacturing, the Taicang facility will also have development and design departments. Steven Shen, who has worked for MULTIVAC since 2012, most recently as Technical Manager for the MULTIVAC sales company in China, is taking over the management of the new company on 1 March 2019.
“China is a significant market for us. This makes the establishment of a local production facility a logical step for us and a further stage in expanding our global production and sales network. Our objective is to achieve shorter delivery times for our customers and to be able to respond even more rapidly to the needs of local customers,” explained Guido Spix, Director and Group COO/CTO.
Steven Shen, future CEO of the new production company, added: “We are very pleased, that the MULTIVAC Group has opted for China as the place to expand its production capacity. This means that we can support our customers even better. Employing highly qualified personnel, we will produce on this site a range of machines in various output categories and for different functions within the packaging procedure, all of them produced to the MULTIVAC quality standard.”
Start of production planned for 2019
A production hall and office area of around 4,300 square metres in total has been rented for the new production company. Thermoforming packaging machines, traysealers, chamber machines, peripheral components and spare parts are all due to be manufactured in the new factory for the Chinese market. The start of production is planned for the end of 2019. In addition to this, a local R&D department will be set up on the site, so that it will be possible to react in a more targeted way to the development needs of regional customers. It is expected that in the next three years up to 100 jobs will be created at the Taicang site.
MULTIVAC China was founded in 2008. Today MULTIVAC in Greater China has a comprehensive sales and service network with around 80 employees. The main office is located in Shanghai, and there are subsidiaries in Beijing, Wuhan, Hong Kong and Taiwan. A state-of-the-art Training and Application Center has been set up in Shanghai, and there is also one in Beijing, which specialises in meat processing.
In addition to the planned factory in China, MULTIVAC has twelve additional production sites in Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Spain, Brazil, Japan, Finland and the USA, as well as more than 80 sales and service companies worldwide.
