ESCATEC has announced the opening today of its new factory in Johor Bahru, Malaysia.It has been designed to the British Retail Consortium (BRC) standard for manufacturing consumer food and drink preparation products. After three months of full operation, the facility will be independently audited for BRC compliance.
Examples of the additional requirements of BRC, compared to a standard EMS facility, include high levels of hygiene in the facility by staff and full record keeping of the location of and regular checking of brittle plastic, glass items such as bulbs and sharp tools, snap knives, etc.
Joseph Neo, the Plant Manager for this new facility, added, “We have spent the past few months perfecting the manufacturing processes to remove potential problems. Our team is also actively involved in solving technical design issues together with ESCATEC Switzerland, the customers and the product design houses. We also clocked hundreds of hours to ensure that products meet food
conformity requirements such as EC 10/2011 and French Decree 92-1306 as well as other applicable requirements such as RoHS, Reach and Nano materials. Nano materials regulation per article 185 of the French Law no 2010-788 is the first of its kind to be introduced in Europe. Its objectives are to gather available information of nanomaterials — properties, applications, toxicological data, etc. to gain insight on their level of production, importation and distribution to the
market.
The 4,274 square metre (46,000 square feet) ESCATEC Industries Sdn. Bhd. is located close to ESCATEC’s existing facility and has the capability of producing up to 500,000 products a year. Daniel Moersdorf is the General Manager of both.
“This is a major investment for ESCATEC,” said Markus Walther, ESCATEC’s CEO, “and reflects our on-going commitment of investing to provide customers with the latest, state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities. This new facility is focussed on manufacturing domestic beverage brewing machines, which is a growing area of specialisation for us.”
ESCATEC’s HR Manager, Mr Ng Sin Hwa, added, “We are delighted to announce that the new factory will create in the region of 300 new jobs.”
www.escatec.com