TI Automotive opens fuel tank molding plant in China

Automotive fluid systems supplier TI Automotive (Auburn Hills, MI) has inaugurated its newest fuel tank systems production facility in Guangzhou, southern China. The 67,000-square-foot facility is TI Automotive's second fuel tank production facility within China and produces blow-molded plastic fuel tanks for Nissan, Toyota, Peugeot Citröen and Qoros.

Overall it is the fifteenth TI facility in China. The new Guangzhou facility is representative of the growth within the plastic fuel tank segment of the automotive industry.

"As global automakers look to reduce weight and improve emissions, plastic fuel tanks play a major role," said Hans Dieltjens, executive vice president, Fuel Tank Systems, TI Automotive. "During the past decade, TI Automotive has developed some of the most advanced blow-molding production technology in the industry and has been producing award-winning products that improve packaging and component placement, while reducing emissions and weight."

"China and the Asia-Pacific region will continue to play a key role in our growth," said Bill Kozyra, chairman, CEO and president, TI Automotive. "We established our first facility in China in 1985 and now have an excellent footprint here, but we expect this to grow as our customers increase their reach within the region."

During the past five years, TI Automotive has opened new facilities in the Czech Republic, Mexico, Russia and in additional locations in China to meet industry expansion.

TI Automotive has deployed its Tank Advanced Process Technology (TAPT) at the Guangzhou facility. The flexible manufacturing process makes it possible to produce multiple types of fuel tanks for all types of powertrains - diesel, gasoline, flex-fuel, Partial Zero Emissions Vehicles (PZEV) and hybrid - from a single design blow tooling set. Currently, OEMs traditionally source the different vehicle tanks by engine type or regional differences.

TAPT allows for global standardization of complete vehicle platforms.  In TAPT, a pre-formed blow-molded parison is separated into two halves while a robot inserts the fuel system components into designated areas of the tank assembly - without size or location limitations. The entire process takes less than one minute and uses existing blow molding equipment with the key added enabler of gripper features in the mold tooling design.