HIWIN Robotics: Fourth in the World in Two Years

HIWIN Technologies Corp. has made a major breakthrough in the R&D of industrial robotics.  The first unit of their wafer soak & blow-dry automatic robot has entered the final verification stage.  Chairman Eric Y.T. Chuo indicates that HIWIN’s goal is to become the world’s fourth largest robotics manufacturer by 2010.  

This large-scale industrial robotics unit combines a linear motor system, linear guideway, actuator, and precision positioning measuring system and was primarily developed with the joint efforts of WIN Semiconductors Corp., the GaAs giant.  The unit selling price is around NT$12 million.  Well-known GaAs manufacturers in the U.S. have expressed strong interest in this new innovation.  

HIWIN is the world’s third largest ball screw manufacturer.  The company’s stock is transacted as emerging stock and will be officially listed in the third quarter of this year. The business revenue of HIWIN Taiwan last year was NT$4.64 billion, a 44% growth on the same period in 2006. The net profit after tax was NT$940 million with EPS of NT$4.67. The consolidated revenue of the group exceeded NT$7 billion.  

The machinery industry continues to look good this year. The accumulated revenue for the past two months of HIWIN reached NT$847 million, a 72.86% increase on the same period last year. Chuo says that besides key spare parts of machine tools, the industrial robot will be included as one of the company’s major products this year. Last year HIWIN took in revenue of NT$300 million in robotics and it is likely to break NT$1 billion this year.  

Eric Y.T. Chuo is the chairman of the Robotics Association Taiwan. HIWIN started to invest in the R&D of industrial robots three years ago and its partnership with WIN Semiconductors bore fruit last year when the first semiconductor wafer take-off robot was introduced. An artificial insemination instrument the company developed for a medical device company in Hamburg, Germany has also attracted attention in the international arena.  

Mr. Chang-Huang Hua, Vice President of WIN Semiconductors, indicates that the semiconductor wafer soak & blow-dry automatic robot developed with HIWIN can replace humans on the assembly line and significantly enhance overall efficiency while at the same time cutting down the break rate of wafers to accommodate tighter mutual partnership in the R&D of automatic equipment in the future. Chairman Chin-Tsai Chen of WIN Semiconductors is also the vice chairman of HIWIN.  

A Stage I plant, a NT$7.1 billion investment of HIWIN in the Taichung Precision Machinery R&D Park, will be completed and commissioned at the end of April and construction of a Stage II production site and operations headquarters will begin soon. The total revenue of the group is likely to break NT$10 billion by the end of next year.  

【April 2, 2008 Economic Daily News】