German firm opens high-tech factory in Suzhou

Manz Automation AG will soon be the world's first foreign provider of integrated production facilities for high-tech companies to launch a factory in China.

"We're going to launch a new factory in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, with a technology and training center," says Dieter Manz, company founder and CEO.

The company, established in 1987, has been publicly listed in Germany since 2006. Manz operates production facilities in Germany, the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, the Slovak Republic and Hungary and has sales and service branches in the United States, South Korea, India and Spain. It employs around 1,750, including 800 in Asia. Sales exceeded 170 million euros last year.

A manufacturer of robotics and automation solutions, Manz has evolved into a one-stop shop that offers a wide range of production technologies for manufacturing crystalline solar cells and thin-film solar cells.

The German company signed its first Asian customer 15 years ago and has since grown in China. The acquisition of Intech in 2008, a leading Taiwan-based supplier of wet process equipment, was a sign that Manz had finally become a local partner to its Asian customers.

"We're trying to contribute on more innovation and technological developments to improve the solar market and lower the cost of solar-related products," Manz says.

Today, with more than 800 employees in factories in both Suzhou, Jiangsu province, and Taoyuan, Taiwan, Manz is not only the leading manufacturer of wet chemical equipment for LCDs but also an important local equipment supplier for the photovoltaic industry.

"We've come a long way in Asia and as an equipment supplier we accompanied the growth of two very important high-tech industries in this region with most of our revenue in 2010 being generated in Asia," the CEO says.

The groundbreaking for Manz's new production facility in Suzhou will be held on Feb 25. The new factory will be located on Manz-owned property of 66,666 square meters.

The new production facility will initially cover about 20,000 sq m with an office building of another 7,000 sq m.

"Suzhou is about to grow for Manz - we have ample space for expansion. We intend to use this site to ramp up local production of our existing LCD-equipment portfolio and to expand our photovoltaic machinery business in China as well," says Eric Chen, president of Manz Automation Asia Ltd.

Chen says he has more than 15 years of industry experience and will be in charge of all new and existing operations on the mainland and in Taiwan.

With its facilities at the Suzhou industrial park, Manz is expected to triple its production capacity in Asia. Seven hundred jobs will be created at the new factory, the company says.

With about 600 people working at Manz' German sites - mostly research and development and engineering facilities - company officials say they are able to provide its customers the best of two worlds: German technology and the advantages of a local supplier.

"Manz can offer cost advantages compared to its European competitors as well as technological advantages compared to local equipment suppliers," Chen says.

Over the past few years, the company has begun developing and manufacturing production systems for lithium-ion batteries.

During a recent trip to Shanghai, Manz and his team also introduced the inline precision control system (IPCS), one of the products to be exhibited at the Shanghai Center.

With the development of IPCS, Manz says it has significantly improved the precision of laser-scribing facilities.

"Our vision is high-tech solutions of the utmost efficiency. We achieve this because we have developed every component in-house, so we can ensure the best possible coordination along the entire process chain and meet our customers' expectations," Manz says.

Looking to the future, Manz emphasized that he had already moved 90 percent of the company's focus to Asia, where the renewable energy market could be potentially developed.

"We're not afraid of the competition from either foreign companies or local manufacturers, but we just want to make sure that our products can supply the clients with the most efficient and profitable products," Manz says.