Starlinger intern, 2024/01 - Issue 36

FIVE DECADES IN CHINA STARLINGER HAS BEEN OPERATING IN CHINA SINCE 1974

To create a level playing field and safeguard our market share in Asia, Starlinger founded Starlinger Plastics Machinery (Taicang) Co., Ltd. in 2005 and began producing the omega and RX loom models there at competitive prices. It became clear in the years that followed that this decision was a good one, and that continues to be the case today: Sales markets could be reclaimed and growth was generated for the company’s sites in Europe. After the AD*STAR ® boom in the early 2020s, the installed production capacity in China has now grown to over 8 billion AD*STAR ® bags per year. With a bilateral trade volume between Austria and China of EUR 20.2 billion in 2023, China remains Austria’s third most important trading partner worldwide and the most important in Asia. Around 950 Austrian companies, particularly from high tech sectors such as mechanical and automotive engineering, measuring instruments and medical technology, environmental technology and water management, are currently represented in China, employing thousands of people, and around a quarter of these companies – like Starlinger – have production facilities there.

“Prime Minister Zhou receives the President of the Austrian Federal Chamber of Commerce, Rudolf Sallinger” is written on the banner above the entrance to the trade fair pavilion behind Franz X. Starlinger-Huemer on the cover of this issue. For the first Austrian machine exhibition in 1974 – a picture of the trade fair catalogue can be seen below – Franz and Erna Starlinger-Huemer travelled to Beijing together with other Austrian machinery manufacturers to showcase our circular looms. As a result, Starlinger was able to secure its first orders from Chinese customers and establish itself as a supplier of circular looms. In the decades that followed, it was mainly Erna Starlinger-Huemer who represented Starlinger at various business delegations during state visits to China. From the 1980s to the mid-1990s in particular, we supplied numerous woven bag production systems to Chinese customers; an advert in the Austrian supplement of the English-language newspaper China Daily from 1985 (see below) bears witness to this successful period. Known for their ability to accurately replicate technology, however, Chinese companies began to copy Starlinger machines and grew to become serious competitors in the global market.

Angelika and Erna Starlinger-Huemer at the inauguration of our plant in Taicang, 2006. © ah

Starlinger in-house exhibition in Taicang, 2024

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