Precision cutting performance

Speaking of a good cooking knife, which brands come up in your mind? For most housewives, German brands such as Wüsthof, ZWILLING (J. A. Henckels), and Klauberg knifes are most trusted, not only due to their sharpness, but also because of their durability. The corresponding German city Solingen accumulated precious metallurgy technology since the middle age, which makes the city one important area for Germany’s knife product development and the sector now supports various industries such as automotive, aerospace, and watchmaking.

Now this superiority can be achieved even in Asia. Zhangzhou Runtai Knives Co.,Ltd has imported German-made heat treatment facility to its factory located in Mainland China and by this high-tech facility, the company has been able to produce knife products in China. The company’s CEO, Mr. Tom Chang, shares with International Plastics News for Asia (IRNA) the company’s achievements in its target markets.

IRNA: What are the company's main products and how do these benefit plastics manufacturers?

Mr. Chang: For the plastics machinery industry, our knife products are designed and manufactured for crusher and granulator machineries. Our knife products are installed on the equipment to achieve best performance so most of our customers are machinery manufacturers. However, we adopt an important operational principle, that is, we have both business-to-business and business-to-customer sales channels. By this advantage we further cooperate with our end-customers on their machinery utilisation. By working with these two groups, we found our knowledge base in cutting performance.

Speaking of cutting performance, our service does not only focus on knife. Our knowledge and strong production capability enable us to provide cutting solutions, which are more important than knife items for end-users. When customers encounter cutting issues, they need comprehensive package to meet their requirement.

To effectively provide solutions, we make contact with them to become aware of their problems, identifying and noting their problems systematically and scientifically. We put the relevant data together and in the process build an important information base which eventually benefits our clients, as we are able to help them through appropriate cutting solutions. The precise knowledge we derive from close contact with our customers also helps us improve our existing products and we get an idea too on future developments. This represents a useful cycle and becomes a precious part of our service.

IRNA: Please describe the company's operations, where is the main facility located and its capacity?

Mr. Chang: I founded this company in my 20s. We first began our business in Taiwan, then we expanded to China. For the past 35 years, we became well established in both markets and now we want to step into the ASEAN region. Because we bought facilities with very good quality, we are able to produce knife products with higher quality but at competitive prices. Our best facility is installed in China and our operational centre is in Taiwan.

Our marketing strategy is to offer customers with our substitute knife items to replace the existing imported knife products; the latter are always at higher prices which is usually not negotiable. Ruen Yuan knife products can replace imported knives while meeting the same excellent quality and cutting performance. In sum, our operational principles are Taiwan spirit; China manufacturing; worldwide marketing.

IRNA: What is the percentage share of the company's exports? What other regions would you like to explore?

Mr. Chang: Most of our knife products are sold to machinery producers, so we have three primary customer groups: Taiwan sales account for 50%, Europe and the US account for 35%, and China’s share is 15%. I believe that since the Chinese machinery industry is developing, this sales market share would change in the near future.

Although there are relatively few machinery producers in the ASEAN region, there are many industries booming there such as plastics and woodworking, and those end users could be our future customers. We look forward to setting up new branches in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia for these four countries have bountiful natural resources and growing domestic economy. Customers there would need knife products with the best price and performance ratio. We will explore this opportunity.

IRNA: How do you maintain the competitiveness of your products?

Mr. Chang: I set the goal for the company: Be a company with hundred year history in the future. For this goal to be achieved, it is important to work with every local government in the world market. Therefore, first we conduct ourselves with the highest ethical standard in dealing with local authority about the tax issue. That is, be honest. We pay our taxes and not resort to tax evasion. We do our business with honestly so that we will not have any weakness or fault in different places where we operate.

Second is about people. For the past three decades, our company size grows steadily but not substantially. That is because it is hard to recruit the right people. So I recruit them one by one in a very careful manner, filtering the suitable personnel for us to work together. Our business is about knife, and our goal is to achieve a sustained or permanent operation. 

Zhangzhou Runtai Knives Co., Ltd
Tel：+86-596 699 6789
Fax：+86-596 699 6789
E-mail: kevin@ruenyuan.com.tw
Website: www.knifeandsaw.com