Peripherals equipment maker Shini doubles production capacity

An expansion of the scale of its Dongguan Plant in China to 20,000m² and the construction of its new Shanghai Pinghu Plant with area of 36,000m² were notable developments on the Chinese mainland for the company in 2009, while an expansion of its Taipei plant was also completed at the end of 2009. Further, July 2009 saw the start up of a manufacturing operation in India for hopper driers, hopper loaders, and temperature control units. "Our [Indian] production costs are similar to that of importing machinery, but we found that Indian processors prefer to deal directly with the manufacturer, and we can also hold stock and reduce delivery time," says corporate president Kenny Wu.

Shini can also now claim to be a one-stop source of all things peripheral with the addition to its product range of robots spanning sprue pickers through to five-axis traverse robots. "We added full-servo robots to our range around one year ago because just offering sprue pickers was not enough to accelerate sales," says Kenny Wu.

The robots are compliant with the Euromap 67 standard and, in fact, "Our initial focus is on the European market," says Wu. "Our pricing is similar to Japanese robots, but we believe the Sigmatek (Lamprechtshausen, Austria) controller we use is much more user friendly." Robots for 100-, 200-, 300-, and under 450-tonne injection machines are available. —Stephen Moore