SOURCE: ODM GROUP
This week, the ODM Group brought clients to Hangzhou province in China for a pen factory audit. Located in the center of Hangzhou – Ningbo is a vibrant city famous for its active manufacturing industries and renowned port. Due its attractive location, for having raw materials readily accessible (plastics, acrylics and metals), it soon became the ideal location for many Stationery factories (a key supplier to the promotional products industry).
Over the years, there have been much competition between many Pen factories, in terms of design, quality and turn over rate. The Ningbo Pen factory that we visited was equipped with relative standard machinery for the region but has a great capacity for production with good raw material components and meticulous online QC..
First step: cutting steel bars for making different parts of a pen.
The ODM Group manufacture a few million pens each year for airlines, hotels and other key clients so we would like to share some of our expertise in manufacture processes…
Polishing with little ball bearings in shaking machine
Making round the steel part and then make hole for decoration
Heat induction for fortifying and polishing
QC of main components of pens
Assembling
Printing and heating in the oven
checking of all the production. On line quality Control
Packing and Shipping…
Pricing for a good quality pen with colour logo can be can be under US$0.10/pc if the volumes are big enough.
ODM makes pens valued anywhere from below US$0.10 to US$10 / pc.