Dow Corning Expands China Application Center To Double Capacity for Customer Innovation
Shanghai, October 28, 2003 - Dow Corning Corporation today announced plans to expand its China Application Center in the Songjiang Industrial Zone, Shanghai, less than a year after the official inauguration of the facilities. This decision represents the company's continued commitment to science and technology excellence and to stronger customer collaboration in innovative product applications and technology solutions.
This second phase extension follows the tremendous success in the launch of stronger local application services, and will double Dow Corning's technical service and development capability in China.
The Songjiang application center focuses on application testing, services and local product development, as well as other customer activities for a diversity of industries to support the company's growing Chinese customer base. Dow Corning's research and development team works with their counterparts from customer companies in both their labs and the application center in Songjiang. It is now staffed with 35 technical professionals serving customers in the textile, personal and household care, construction, rubber, plastic and other processing industries.
Dr. James White, Dow Corning's Executive Director and Chief Technology Officer, described the benefits of the expansion. He said, "The application center in Songjiang has been such an immense success - our customers received very positively our efforts to bring in state-of-the-art innovations and customized solutions. We believe the new phase will serve to spur expansion and development of our customers' business and help them to be more competitive in the market.
"Our customer base in China is expanding, and the business of our customers becoming more sophisticated. We believe stronger collaboration and investment in technical service and development capabilities will continue to serve us well as we commercialize innovations in silicon-based solutions to meet customer needs. We are extremely pleased with the quality of the local talent we have been able to employ in the application center." White added.
With the engineering design already completed, it is expected that the new facilities will be in operation within 12 months. Phase two of the Application Center is 2100 m² in size, with the new flexible laboratory space, providing 10% of R&D resources of Dow Corning worldwide.
The Phase two Applications Center will be used to conduct joint research with customers for new product applications and formulations. Clearly, this provides an excellent venue for domestic enterprises to embrace world-class and cutting-edge technology through working with Dow Corning's technical professionals.
Dow Corning has a long history of commitment to technology and innovation, and this is reflected by its larger than average allocation of sales revenue to research and development. In general, the company invests about 6 percent of global sales in R&D, far exceeding the industry norms. Dow Corning also has significantly more patents in the silicone industry than its competitors.
"China has always been a strategic component of the company's future success. As Dow Corning celebrates its 30th anniversary in China this year, we are pleased to have this opportunity to increase our investment in this market, in particular in areas to strengthen our innovation capability for customer success." WK Ho, general manager of Dow Corning China said.
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