About the company: Fook Tin Technologies Ltd specialises in the design, manufacturing, marketing and distribution of quality electronic products. The company's headquarters are in Hong Kong and its production facilities are located in Shenzhen, China.

So what's the problem? Fook Tin realised that the wastewater discharged from the company's 'phosphoric process' might be breaching the national standard (DB44/26-2001). The phosphoric process is one of the steps taken when coating metal parts in a protective powder. Each day in the past, it took 18 cubic metres of water and 600 litres of diesel to complete this process and for the subsequent rinsing of around 17,000 other electronic parts.

This was their solution. Driven by the company's environmental, quality and productivity policy, as well as the need to meet the national standard, Fook Tin started to optimise its powder coating process in 2002. The company invested around HKD760,000 on designing and installing the new phosphoric treatment and rinsing line. It also formed a dedicated task force that was charged with implementing the new improvement programme. The key features of the programme were as follows:

• Automation of rinsing process;


• Redesign of 'phosphoric pool' to enable the reuse of reagents, so that only wastewater from spray rinsing is to be discharged;


• Direct heating (burning diesel instead of using electricity generated from diesel generators reduced the heating time by 200%);


• Speeding up the plating and rinsing line.

Who gained from the project? By installing the automatic phosphoric process powder coating facility line, Fook Tin was able to reduce costs and enhance productivity in many ways. For instance in 2003 and 2004, the water consumption was down by 90%, diesel consumption is down by 200%, and much less plating reagent was needed.

Looking back. Productivity has increased by 200%, from around 700 pieces per hour to 2200 pieces per hour. What's more, as fewer resources are consumed, less time and paperwork is needed for processing the procurement of these resources. The quality of the wastewater discharged under the new facility also meets the national standard. As a result, efficiency and productivity are also enhanced, in addition to competitiveness.

Fook Tin is currently upgrading the powder coating and waste water treatment facilities to minimise the use of chemicals containing phosphorous and to further reduce water consumption by recycling.