PolyOne will open a new polymer distribution warehouse and sales facility focused on serving healthcare customers in Shanghai on July 1-the first PolyOne Distribution unit outside the U.S. Announced at MD&M East, PolyOne officials said the new center, which will be collocated with an existing PolyOne color and engineering materials manufacturing and sales facility, will shorten lead times for its customers in China to days, not weeks.

Michael L. Rademacher, president PolyOne Distribution, told PlasticsToday that his company made the move to follow its customers within the medical segment. "[PolyOne] has a significant presence in the distribution segment of the healthcare market here in the U.S.," Rademacher said, "and many of our customers here have opened up, or will be opening up, operations in China, and they really wanted to get us engaged and involved over there. We have been asked and encouraged to set up a distribution operation there to support and help them as they transition their product offering from North America over to Asia."

The distribution operation will be headed up by Teddy Xiong, PolyOne's district manager in China. Xiong has been with PolyOne since 2005 and has about 13 years of experience in sales and marketing. Most recently, he was a so-called "black belt" for PolyOne in China, joining the distribution business on April 1. The company has also hired on a customer service and logistics individual, and Rademacher noted that the new operations will have the "full support" of the PolyOne color and engineering materials businesses. "We're able to leverage a lot of the shared services," Rademacher said, specifically citing the administrative and finance support teams.

PolyOne's existing 90,000-sq-ft facility is located in the Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone. Based in the northeast of Pudong New Area, the free-trade zone, which will allow PolyOne to import materials for its customers duty free, is adjacent to the mouth of Yangtze River and about 20 km from downtown Shanghai. PolyOne plans to broaden its distribution service to customers in other industries over the next twelve months.