In mid-March, CTWANT visited and held an interview about FCS (6603). Located in Guanmiao District, Tainan City, and with an area of approximately 9.7 hectares, FCS is a low-profile pride of Taiwan for being both Taiwan’s largest PIMM manufacturer and one of the global top 25 PIMM manufacturers. Although having been listed for 20 years, this business-to-business (B2B) company has rarely become the focus of public attention. However, most daily life plastic products are produced with machines manufactured by this company, and enterprises such as Tesla, BYD, Foxconn Technology Group, and Panasonic (Japan) are all its customers.

“The real difficulty lies in the injection of super-large and super-small plastic. While ultra-high precision is required for a PIMM to inject plastic that is as thin as a toothpick and prevent the burrs of defective plastic from causing tingles, can you imagine how large a PIMM needs to be for manufacturing a plastic uni-body pallet at a maximum size of approximately 120cm (L) x 120cm (W)?” Alan Wang, the 51-year-old general manager and CEO of FCS, told the reporter.

FCS was co-founded by Po-hsun Wang, Alan Wang’s father and the current chairman of FCS, and his two brothers in 1974. First as a lathe factory, it was later transformed into a PIMM manufacturer. When Alan Wang entered the company in 2000, the annual revenue of FCS was approximately NTD 780 million. In comparison, its annual revenue reached NTD 3.86 billion last year, while its services reached more than 8,000 customers based on its five global manufacturing factories, including the Guanmao Tainan factory, the Dongguan (China) factory, the Ningbo Hangzhou Bay (Ningbo) factory and the factory in India, as well as its marketing offices in 55 cities worldwide.

CTWANT visited and held an interview about FCS on its 50th anniversary. Alan Wang, who officially assumed the position of CEO five years ago, guided us through FCS in person. In the product showroom, Alan Wang, holding a milk-white washer outer tub in his arms, introduced it to us: “This was manufactured with a 1,700-ton all-electric PIMM, which is the largest in Asia. It is now supplied to major home appliance manufacturers in Japan.”

Alan Wang turned around and picked up a three-color car light cover: “We have a clear advantage in multi-component PIMMs. Limo manufacturers have a demand for multi-colored, chic car lights, which results in our strong presence in the supply market for the global top six auto lighting manufacturers.” He continued: “As for auto parts, dashboards and car light covers are the most common products. Since the OEM certification for auto part products is strict and their market access is subject to tight restrictions, it takes more than two years to develop such a product and get it certified. Our sales performance regarding multi-component PIMMs for auto parts is the number one within the industry, and BMW, Tesla, BYD, and DEPO Auto Parts are all our customers!”

Prompted by FCS’s employees and other people in the room, this second generation successor to FCS put on a pair of optical eyewear manufactured by FCS and held a car light cover as the shield, posing like a Marvel hero for the reporter’s photograph with a kind of youth-like vitality. Just a moment later, however, he changed back to be a professional tour guide, continuing to tell us how he was carrying forward this nearly 50-year-old brand established by his father.

The total revenue of FCS for 2023 was NTD3.86 billion. As the current main products of FCS can be put into three categories, the contributions to the total revenue by product category are as follows. Auto and motorcycle parts accounted for 60% of the total revenue, while sports and household supplies accounted for 21% and 3C and home appliance products accounted for 17%. Besides various major auto brands, household supply manufacturers such as Starbucks, ADIDAS and NIKE are also FCS’s major customers because the sales of household supplies such as toothbrushes, tableware and shoes are affected by their appearances and these manufacturers have a demand for making these products in diverse, appealing colors. Moreover, FCS is also involved in the semiconductor industry, as many matrix trays where IC components are loaded into (or the packages for IC components) are manufactured with their PIMMs. Alan Wang walked the reporter to a gigantic PIMM in the factory, which was even larger than a 40ft container. The machine was being tested for the production of car light covers, while an operator in blue uniform was standing on the machine, taking out the injected product. “This machine is a 3,300-ton hydraulic PIMM. “ton” here doesn’t refer to weight, but to the clamping force. A great force is required to exceed the pressure being exerted by the molten plastic and keep the mold closed,” Alan Wang explained.

Noticing the reporter’s surprise, he added: “This is not the largest machine ever manufactured by FCS. The largest one is 16 meters long, four meters high, with a clamping force of up to 4,000 tons, and able to produce a product in a maximum weight of 120kg and a maximum size of 1.2m (L) x 1.2m (W).” He also told us: “That machine was already delivered to the customer. After the customer placed the order for the machine, it was assembled, subject to the production test and the acceptance procedure, and disassembled in FCS's factory, before it was delivered to and reassembled in the customer’s factory.”

In view of the inconvenience of the transportation of large machines, and in order to support customers’ local production, Alan Wang, immediately after the assumption of CEO five years ago, decided to establish factories in India and Ningbo Hangzhou Bay. The new Ningbo Hangzhou Bay factory is scheduled to be open and put into operation in September this year, which is expected to become a new driver of FCS’s operation.

The increase or decrease in equipment orders placed by enterprises will tell whether the global industry has recovered or not. Alan Wang revealed to us that, in terms of orders received by FCS in the first half year, FCS’s business performance improved in comparison with the previous year. Specifically, the business performance boomed significantly in Taiwan, Thailand, and India, and the biggest contributions were made by the auto part industry, the food package industry and the sports industry. On April 9th, FCS announced that its monthly revenue for March 2024 set a new record, reaching NTD487 million with a month-on-month growth rate of 300% and a year-on-year growth rate of approximately 50%, and the cumulative revenue by Q1 reached NTD925 million, up 17.67% year on year.

According to the analysis made by FCS’s spokes-person Ying-Ying Chang, thanks to the transition facilitated by the goal of net-zero emissions and ESG-related issues, all-electric PIMMs that consume less energy and have higher efficiency continuously achieve good sales. Moreover, FCS endeavors to make smart factories and smart manufacturing become its two major cores, which are expected to gain a competitive advantage when FCS enters the global market.

“With the expectation that the annual revenue will reach NTD 6 billion in two years and NTD 10 billion in five years, we aim to be one of the global top 10 plastic machinery manufacturers,” Alan Wang shared his objective with the reporter before ending the interview and carrying on his next agenda item, the conclusion of a contract with a customer in the auto part industry. The reporter learned later that FCS successfully concluded the contract regarding this NTD 13 million order for large two-component PIMMs.