Low-priced Chinese-built extruders have arrived in North America to make pipe, sheet, film and profiles. Chinese-built extruders are in small sizes and modest numbers in North America. Most are bought one at a time by large, sophisticated processors who are sampling the Chinese made machines and can afford the cost of to chucking up a machine away if they are not satisfied on grounds of performance. Some are being bought by small start-up companies who cannot resist the lucrative prices that stand at 25-35% of North American or European extruders. Some of these North American buyers have been satisfied with the performance, and appreciating a good buy, have ordered additional machines.
Most of the Chinese extruders in the U.S. and Canada are being used to produce PVC pipe and profiles. Some are used on specialty extrusion lines for composite and corrugated pipe, wood/plastic profiles and blown/cast film. The most frequent general problem encountered with Chinese extruders is electrical compatibility issues. This leads to replacement of a Chinese controller with a made-in-USA controller. Wires also pose a problem- they may be the right color but too thin to meet American electrical codes. In the worst cases, processors had to rewire entire machines by electrical contractors to bring them up to the requisite code, adding a cost of US$50,000-60,000 per line. This amounts to almost double the ultimate cost of some of the extruders. Spare parts for the lines, though readily available from China, need to get stocked in the US.

Few notable Chinese players in North America are listed below:
Sun Centre Machinery Co. (represented in USA by Karlville), has 11 blown film lines in the U.S. Sun Centre also supplies winders, oscillating nips, and bubble cages to processors. Its standard controls come from Fatek in Taiwan; Japanese or German controls are optional.
Two Taiwanese machine builders have supplied small, simple blown film lines and single-lane bagmakers in North America for as long as 17 years.
Queen�s Machinery in Taipei claims to have over 50 blown film lines in USA.
Shen Wei Da is reported to have over 50 twin-screw extruders in the U.S. One customer initially bought one to try out, then added 10 more at a window and door profile plant, despite some issues with overheating. Shen Wei Da originally built parallel counter-rotating twin-screws from 75-130 mm dia. Three years ago, the company introduced parallel co-rotating twins from 22-127 mm. Its latest development is dual-strand downstream equipment for large profiles.
Lung Meng Machineries (represented in the U.S. and Canada) has a number of blown film lines in North America.
Taiwan�s Han King Plastic Machinery Co. has blown film extruders in USA and Canada.
China�s Zhejiang Honghua Machinery Plastic & Rubber Co. sold its first sheet line in North America along with 4 thermoformers.
Nanjing Rubber & Plastics Machinery Plant Co. (Global Rubber and Plastics Machinery Co.) has sold 9 extrusion lines last year to one company in Canada.
Jinhu has delivered 20 extruders in the U.S., mostly for small PVC pipe. It makes both single- and counter-rotating twin-screws.
Jiancheng Machinery Co. in Beijing (also represented by Skyreach) has sold over 20 PVC extruders from 20-75 mm diameter since 2004, firms in the Toronto area, for making pipe, window profiles, and foamed PVC. It supplies single-screw and conical and parallel counter-rotating twins.

Chinese machine builders have entered joint ventures with established European machine builders to make their machines more acceptable in export markets. Ningbo Fangli Group Co. has had a joint venture with Graewe GmbH Maschinenbau in Germany since 2003, to integrate Fangli�s pipe extruders with Graewe�s high-speed pipe-coiling technology. Graewe-Fangli extruders and coilers use Chinese-built Siemens controls with software written by Fangli.
For cast film, Nantong Sanxin Plastics Equipment Technology Co. entered a joint venture last year with Dolci Srl in Milan, Italy, which allows it to offer a choice of Simplas dies from Italy and NDC thickness gauges or the local Chinese equivalent.
A general review concludes that these machines are ideal for the Third World, where a processor may want to run various materials like HDPE, LLDPE and polyamide all on one machine, where labour is cheap, and where lower output does not make much of a difference. A few Chinese equipment purchases have resulted in lost production or low-quality products, litigation, and even plant closures and bankruptcy.