As part of our several-year cooperation with Shanghai Screw Compressors Co., Ltd (SCR), we visited the production plant of Anest Iwata in Japan in December 2022. In this article, you will find out what was the subject of our visit and what news you can look forward to in 2023.
Meeting with SCR representatives
Our company was represented in the land of the rising sun by colleagues from the department dealing primarily with the sale of screw compressors and compressor plant designing. On the first day of our visit, we discussed the future and development of our cooperation with SCR company representatives and discussed the launch of new types of screw compressors on the Czech and Slovak markets. At the meeting, we also learned that the SCR company plans to establish two large warehouses in the territory of the European Union for faster distribution of screw compressors, one of which could also be in the Czech Republic. For our Czech and Slovak customers, this fact would mean not only a reduction in the delivery time by several months, but above all a more diverse selection from several product lines and variants of individual machines.
Training at Anest Iwata Headquarters
The following day, we visited the headquarters of Anest Iwata in Yokohama, which concluded a strategic joint-venture with SCR in 2018 with the aim of increasing the two companies' share of the global market in the screw compressor segment and significantly strengthening the development of energy-efficient compressors and introducing a strict Japanese quality management system. After getting to know the company's management, we went to a training session on the topic of oil-free compressors and maintenance of airends with illustrative demonstrations. As part of the topic of oil-free compressors, attention was mainly paid to the frequency of use of these machines, when, compared to other countries, more than 60% of oil-free screw compressors are in operation in production enterprises in most Japanese prefectures. This fact proves that machines that do not need any oil to operate will find application in other areas than just the pharmaceutical and food industries. An equally important fact when using oil-free machines is not only the lower costs associated with condensate disposal and maintenance, but also the very low noise level, which could be compared to, for example, a modern refrigerator.
A visit to the Anest Iwata production plant
The day after visiting the headquarters of Anest Iwata, we also visited its production plant near the city of Fukushima, which specializes in the production of scroll and piston compressors. After the introduction of the company's management, we were given a tour of the individual stages of production. The pride of the production process itself is the automatic line, into which its operators only insert material, the number of which is shown by the LED display above each station. Thanks to this technical improvement, the production process is faster and at the same time the error rate of the operator is eliminated to a minimum. The tour continued, for example, to the anechoic chamber, where employees test the noise level of the compressors. An interesting insight in this particular part of the tour was the fact that, thanks to a team of experienced experts in the R&D department, Anest Iwata produces some of the quietest piston compressors on the market.
End of visit
We ended our visit to Japan with an official dinner with the board of directors of Anest Iwata and SCR. After the newly acquired knowledge from the previous days, we mainly led a debate about oil-free screw compressors in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and what we can do in our mutual cooperation for the development of this segment in these territories.
