Kurtz Best Practice: Yee Fung
Champion´s Choice!
In 1977, Mr. Leung Lun Ping founded Yee Fung Polyfoam Factory in Hong Kong, where EPS packaging parts were literally produced with his bare hands on a semi-automatic vertical press. Today, Yee Fung has grown into a 200-million-Euro company that has been awarded China´s Top 200 Light Industrial Companies in 2021.
The history of Kurtz Ersa and Yee Fung dated back to 1986 – his company was among the first in Asia to buy Kurtz Moulding Machines. Since then, Yee Fung has purchased over 100 machines and remained a loyal business partner of Kurtz GmbH & Co. KG. Sidney Leung, Managing Director of Yee Fung International Ltd. and 2nd generation owner, tells the success story: In the mid-1990s, Yee Fung foresaw that EPS packaging would become a mass product and that competition in mainland China would increase. The company pursued a strategy to diversify its business and focused on higher value-added products combined with advanced production technology.
Currently, Yee Fung has four factories in China producing EPP car parts, bicycle helmets, ski helmets and goggles, eyeglass lenses and ETPU soles for sports shoes. To be able to manufacture complex products while meeting the strictest quality standards requires sophisticated machinery. For more than 35 years, Yee Fung has relied on Kurtz systems. Machines, such as the BOOST FOAMER and the ROTO FOAMER, which were originally developed for Yee Fung. Recently, these machines have been complemented by the WAVE FOAMER with RF technology, presented for the first time at the K trade fair 2019 and meanwhile a real part of the Yee Fung machine park.
Sports helmet production for more safety
In the conference room of Yee Fung, one cannot fail to notice the posters with famous brands such as Adidas, Oakley, Giro, Fox head and more impressively photos of sports celebrities and champions. In the four factories, sports helmet production is the biggest part of Yee Fung´s business. It was in the 1990’s when Mr. Leung senior saw the number of bicycles users in China and wished to improve the safety of the people. He started to explore bicycle helmets production. Instead of being just a parts supplier, Mr. Leung spoke directly with reputable producers in the US for strategic alliance – which was formed. From producing just the EPS part of the helmet in the beginning, today Yee Fung has the full capabilities from designing the helmet to the manufacturing of the complete product with the EPS inner cushion, lining, outer shell, painting, straps fully assembled.
When human safety is concerned, a sports helmet must meet the highest quality standards. A special EPS quality with high density is needed, which is perfectly fused with the outer shell. This is achieved by the flexible and precise parameters settings in the Kurtz Moulding Machine. For high-performance sports helmets, the design is particularly complicated because aerodynamics are required and special material must be used for the inner lining, straps and visor, which are moulded directly into the EPS. As a result, the production efficiency of conventional machines dropped dramatically. Together, Kurtz and Yee Fung developed the ROTO FOAMER to solve this problem and increase production cycle time by 50%.
Kurtz supplies the state-of-the-art RF moulding technology exclusively to Yee Fung in Asia for the production of sports helmets. This technology not only increases overall efficiency and quality, it also makes a significant contribution to sustainability through its significantly reduced carbon footprint during production. Sports helmets, manufactured by Yee Fung on a Kurtz machine, recently attracted renewed public attention at the Winter Olympics, when Aleksander Aamodt Kilde took the bronze medal with his Oakley ARCS5Pro model and the charming Eileen Gu won, with her blue Oakley MOD1 model, twice gold, once silver. The incredible determination and commitment of such winners is exactly the spirit of success that has united and distinguished business partners Yee Fung and Kurtz for over 35 years.