17/03/2008 - 04:12 PM

The 12th International Exhibition on Woodworking Machinery and Furniture Manufacturing Equipment finished on March 10th, in China International Exhibition Centre (CIEC). About 600 exhibitors from 20 countries and regions participated in the exhibition, which took place on an area of 60,000 sqm, 36% larger than last year. The visitors and buyers from Europe, Southeast Asia and America were very active; about 35,000 professional visitors attended the exhibition.

“Since solid wood prices and labor costs have recently been increasing in China, the efficient machines which can better utilize solid wood are becoming more and more popular. The optimizing crosscut saw produced by Weinig AG can satisfy these requirements,” said Frank Kohler, Weinig’s sales manager for Asia-Pacific. During the exhibition, Weinig showcased the OptiCut 200. According to Daisy Zhang, Weinig’s sales manager in China, this is one of the most widely used machines in the Asian country. Furthermore, OptiCut 450 Quantum, which is the fastest crosscut saw at present, with a max infeed speed of 415 m/min, will make great strides in China in the future. Daisy Zhang sees good possibilities for this machine in the wood building industry in Northern China. Since the crosscut saw became more important, new competitors of Weinig, such as the American company Union Brother and the Chinese company Jangia Machinery Co., Ltd also exhibited their crosscut machines, with max infeed speeds of 300m/min and 240m/min respectively.

HOMAG showcased the edge-banding machine KAL 310/8/A3/S2 in Beijing. Wang Dayong, the Beijing area sales executive of HOMAG, said the company will exhibit new machines in the Guangzhou exhibition (March 27-30).

A few people estimated that investments in the wood flooring industry reached their peak in China. Mingshuo, a machinery company specialized in manufacturing coating equipments, still sells its machines to the flooring manufacturers, but they became more active in the furniture industry for the past two years. Hualong, also a coating machine manufacturer, pays more attention to the furniture and kitchen industry as well. “As for the flooring market, I think it is saturated in China. We have to improve our machines to adapt them to furniture manufacturers’ needs and to avoid any wasting of the paint,” said the export manager Cliff Lee of Hualong machinery Co., Ltd. They are planning to build a new factory which is three times bigger than the existing one next year. Once it is built, it will be the largest coating machinery factory in Asia. At DOMOTEX Asia, which closely followed Beijing wood machinery fair, it turned out big companies still invest in new machines.

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