Production is expected to get under way before the end of 2007 at a new 50,000 m² plant being built by injection moulder and toolmaker Tontec International Holdings (Hong Kong / China; www.tontec.com) at Tianjin in northern China. This will be Tontec's third site, and also its largest. Products manufactured at the new plant will include automotive equipment. This is a new line of business for the company founded as a toolmaker in 1982 in Hong Kong. Up to now, Tontec has focused almost exclusively on housings and technical parts for electrical and electronics applications. Speaking in Shenzhen, director Benton Choi admitted that "we are still on the learning curve, and this is a lot different from what we are currently doing."

President and company founder Nelson Lam had initially moved production from Hong Kong to Shenzhen in 1993. The company then built a second 28,000 m² plant in Suzhou in 2003, which now has 78 injection moulding machines and 1,000 employees. It has 2,300 employees and 141 machines with clamping forces between 250 and 10,000 kN at the 40,000 m² Shenzhen plant. Another 40 employees work at corporate headquarters in Hong Kong. Most of the machines in use at Shenzhen are low-cost models made in China, but a number of European-made machines are already operating in Suzhou. These machines are cheaper to maintain in the long run, Choi told Western site visitors at Shenzhen during the Chinaplas show in Guangzhou in late May.

Tontec had sales of USD 107m in 2006. Injection moulding accounted for 80%, with the rest generated by toolmaking. Some 85% of toolmaking output is used internally. According to Henry Ng, engineering manager in Shenzhen, Tontec processes about 9,000 t of polymer per year, primarily technical and high-performance materials such as PC, POM, PBT, ABS and HIPS, sourced through a central material acquisition organisation. Its portfolio encompasses housings for electrical and electronics applications such as vacuum cleaners, laptops, cordless screwdrivers, pumps, medical equipment and POS terminals. Customers include Bosch, Ingenico, Philips and Schneider. In Europe, the company has offices and warehouses in Spain, the UK and the Czech Republic and has similar facilities in the US.