FCI Electronics boosts R&D funding in China
A worker gets cracking, processing electronic connectors in the workshop. [Photo/WeChat account: ntgjgxq]
FCI Electronics (Nantong) Co Ltd – a wholly-owned subsidiary of US electronics connectors manufacturing giant Amphenol Corp – is scaling up its research and development in China.
Located in the Nantong National High-tech Industrial Development Zone – in Nantong city, in East China's Jiangsu province – its products are widely used in computers, automobiles, power grids and other fields.
Being an export-oriented company, FCI Nantong has a high proportion of its products sold overseas. Last year, the COVID-19 pandemic delivered a heavy blow to the group, resulting in low production and sales in the first quarter of 2020.
According to Zhu Shoukun, general manager of the company, sales in the first quarter last year decreased by more than 10 percent over the same period in 2019.
In order to survive, the company began to set foot in the fields of medical equipment and intelligent wearable devices.
In addition, demand increased for connectors from domestic automakers – such as Great Wall Motors and BYD – leading to a significant rebound in terms of orders in the second quarter, up 20 percent. The annual sales of the company reached 1.15 billion yuan ($177.1 million) in 2020, a year-on-year increase of 10 percent.
At the start of this year, many employees responded to the call to stay put during the Spring Festival holiday, which provided sufficient manpower for enterprises to deal with orders and guaranteed a quick production resumption after the break.
As a result, FCI Nantong achieved sales of 240 million yuan in the first two months of 2021.
In order to ensure product quality, the company spends three percent of its sales revenue on R&D annually, which was the main reason the company's sales still rose despite the weak economic situation, according to Zhu.
This year, the company will reportedly invest 40 million yuan in R&D on big data storage and 5G applications, to meet the development needs brought about by Industry 4.0 and the 5G era.
