May 4 2005
Enthone Inc., a business of Cookson Electronics, has announced the opening of its Shanghai Technical Service Centre in Shanghai, P.R.C. The new facility is a key part of Enthone’s strategic expansion plan to reinforce and accelerate its already significant market presence throughout China. Specifically, the Shanghai Technical Centre substantially enhances the company’s overall capabilities to provide immediate technical support, applications engineering, analytical services, sales and product warehousing throughout Northern China.
The cost of the Centre exceeds $3 million and serves as the central location for over sixty Cookson Electronics professionals. Over the last three years, the company has invested over $10 million to further strengthen its manufacturing, technical support, marketing and sales organizations throughout China. In 1984, Enthone was the first specialty chemical company to establish operations in the Mainland.
“The unprecedented and increasing market demand for Enthone® materials and processes throughout Asia has mandated the opening of the Centre to meet our customers’ current and future growth plans,” said Huub van Dun, President of Enthone Inc.
The Centre will include a state-of-the-art facility to enable processing of Enthone functional and decorative coatings that deliver corrosion protection, wear resistance and superior aesthetics on a variety of parts used in automotive, plumbing and other surface finishing applications. In total, five plating lines will be installed for pre-treatment, plating and post-treatment chemical processing.
Specifically, plating lines will process parts using UDIQUE® plating-on-plastics processes, as well as Perma SHIELD™ hexavalent-chrome-free coating systems that meet the automotive industry’s requirements to comply with the End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) and RoHS directives, as well as other environmental and industry standards. ANKOR® hard chrome and decorative chrome alternatives, ENfinity™ long-life and ENPLATE® lead-free and cadmium-free electroless nickel processes will also have dedicated lines.
"The current and future investments we are making to the Shanghai Technical Service Centre are essential to support the growing and stringent demands of customer programs within the Shanghai region, as well as to seamlessly address global business initiatives that involve the re-location of resources to Asia,” said Raymond Fong, Vice President of Enthone Asia. “Enthone remains committed to providing the highest standards of technical and analytical support, logistics, and applications expertise to our customers.”
Mr. van Dun added, “In 2004, Enthone achieved a breakthrough market position in aluminum wheel plating in Asia. We will continue to evaluate and invest in technologies, applications and markets that expand our Enthone chemistry business and support the needs of our worldwide customers.”
The Shanghai Technical Service Centre will include a staff of technical support and applications engineers that will use today’s most advanced analytical and diagnostic capabilities to perform expert interpretative analysis for the development of future technology requirements and to provide solutions to current application challenges. The facility is equipped with advanced instrumentation analysis, including AAS, UV/VIS, CVS and a CASS test chamber that will be employed to analyze a wide range of materials, including decorative accessories, functional items and electronic components.
Enthone Inc., is a business of Cookson Electronics. The company is a leading supplier of high performance specialty chemicals and coatings used in the electronics and surface finishing industries. Enthone manufactures, markets and distributes its functional, decorative and electronic processes that are used in printed wiring board, semiconductor, automotive, aerospace, jewelry, and plumbing applications.
http://www.cooksongroup.co.uk