10 years STIWA in China

 

The STIWA Group celebrated its Nantong site in China yesterday evening with a grand gala together with customers, partners, and employees.  A success story began 10 years ago with the opening of the first international subsidiary in China: Today, the site Nantong generates a turnover of 129 Mio. RMB (17,7 million euros) with currently 170 employees. E-mobility is an important future topic.

 

On December 6, 2013, the STIWA Group opened its first international subsidiary in China. The first contacts in the Chinese market date back almost 20 years. In 2004, the STIWA Group delivered the first machine for the Chinese branch of one of its customers. Today, this machine is still in operation. Further regular customers showed their interest to cooperate even closer with STIWA in the local marketplace. The decision to follow with an own site proved to be the right decision for STIWA from the beginning, says the Managing Director of STIWA GmbH, Peter Sticht: “We were able to take an advantage of the high dynamism of the Chinese market and have grown rapidly.”

 

Continuous growth

With the successful development of automation, STIWA Nantong could extend continuously the business divisions: The business divisions Manufacturing Software (2016), Machining (2017) and Production (2020) have been established according to the Austrian example. STIWA was thus able to extend its cooperation to other regular customers. “With our know-how, we could contribute furthermore, that some of our customers have been established their own production sites in China in a very short time”, adds Michael Fuchshuber, Managing Director of STIWA Automation.

 

The pandemic has been one of the biggest challenges in the last years, but also a change for further development of the site. Despite of the difficult environmental conditions, the supplier production has been installed successfully, further know-how in automation has been established and the turnover has been increased. “Our high quality and our flexibility set us clearly apart from our competitors.  As a strong partner on site we have proved oneself successfully in this time of crisis”, says Michael Fuchshuber.

 

Successful project: Apprentice training

An important successful project is also the apprenticeship training in STIWA Nantong. “We have started apprenticeship training in 2018. Since then, we educate continuously new apprentices every year and we thus set up an effective counter-model against the prevailing deficiency of professional personnel in China. Many European companies, that are also acting in China, ask us for this concept”, says Peter Sticht. 

 

E-mobility: the large topic for the future

Currently, 170 employees are working at the site in Nantong and are generating an annual turnover of 129 Mio. RMB (17.7 million euros). “In the meantime, we have come to the limits of our spatial capacities. For us, E-mobility is thereby an important future topic. The potential is great, and we are exploring our possibilities. We start with a lot of energy in the future”, says Peter Sticht.

 

Celebration with 300 guests

At a gala evening in the Interkontinental Hotel in Nantong yesterday, the anniversary has been celebrated. Long-time companions, customers, suppliers, employees, the founding couple Walter and Herta Sticht and the management – a total of 300 guests – experienced an atmospheric insight in the success story of the STIWA Group in China.