Consider this: Absolute Haitian sold machine No. 5,000 last year to a molder in Texas. That is an average of 263 molding machines a year for the company’s first 19 years.
In 2006, a Canadian company was selling a small number of Haitian molding machines here. Haitian International wanted to increase sales in the U.S. and Canada, so Glenn Frohring left his job at Van Dorn Demag to join manufacturers’ reps Nate Smith and Mike Ortolano, owners of Absolute Machinery, to form Absolute Haitian to be the exclusive Haitian distributor in the U.S. and Canada.
There were plenty of naysayers at the time: Chinese machines are cheaply built and will not last; service or spare parts won’t be available; delivery will take too long. I also recall hearing comments directed at the Chinese company’s owners that could only be described as racist.
“We kept our focus,” Frohring said during a recent interview. “We did not let that background chatter bother us. There were a lot of issues, but we were like, ‘We’ll show you!’ “
Many of those criticisms about the machines and service were probably accurate at the time, but Frohring said the three Absolute Haitian owners poured profits from early machine sales into building an extensive sales, service and support business. They also gave Haitian plenty of feedback on the technical aspects of what U.S. molders wanted.
It also helped that Haitian International has become the biggest manufacturer of injection molding machines in the world, selling 50,000 to 60,000 units a year. Those machines include servo-hydraulic, hybrid, all-electrics and multi-component configurations ranging from 44 tons to nearly 10,000 tons of clamping force.
Haitian International also invests heavily on engineering improvements, and its presses nowadays are equal to the best in the market. Last year, it introduced HT-Xtend, a control technology based on artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically optimize process parameters, monitor energy use and support multi-stage molding. HT-Xtend comes standard on Haitian presses.
This year, it took HT-Xtend to a higher level with the new X-Injection Molding Cloud, a deep-AI system designed for AI-driven manufacturing.
Frohring said RFQs from some molding companies now want to know about the machinery’s AI capabilities.
Even with its huge corporate size, Haitian International has shown the ability to quickly adapt innovations to its presses. It also designs its machines using many standard part numbers. “That is important,” said Frohring, “because a press owner can easily buy replacement parts from their local suppliers”.
Despite plastics manufacturers worldwide hunkering down to ride out a poor economy, Haitian International has continued to expand its footprint. It opened a 2.7-million-square-foot plant in Serbia this year, its sixth plant worldwide. It also opened a medical applications center in Suzhou, China, to showcase complex medical molding capabilities.
Haitian International has a machine manufacturing plant in Mexico that builds some machines for Absolute Haitian to sell in the U.S. and Canada. This month, Absolute Haitian began assembling two-platen, servo-hydraulic Jupiter-series presses in its Moncks Corner, S.C. facility, which was built in 2020 as a manufacturing center as well as an applications lab. Major machine components are shipped from China and assembled along with U.S.-sourced components.
Absolute Haitian took on sales and service of Niigata molding machines in 2025, which was acquired by Haitian International in 2023. Those machines are built in a new plant in Japan.
Haitian International’s lower cost and energy-efficient technology have also impacted machinery manufacturers outside North America. Engel developed the Wintec brand, and Arburg recently introduced the Trend line. Both standard machine series are built in China and advertise low sales cost.
During its biggest-ever year, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Absolute Haitian sold 489 injection molding machines in the U.S. and Canada. The overall market is now about half the size it was then, but Frohring said Absolute is having a good year.
Haitian International’s focus on machine innovation and low cost of ownership has challenged other makers, and Absolute Haitian’s focus on service and support has shaped the domestic machinery market. Processors now have better choices.
