ATM maker aims big in China

Wincor Nixdorf, one of the world's biggest banking and retail equipment manufacturers, aims to maintain double-digit growth in China in coming years through product portfolio expansion and innovation, a top company official said.

"We want to achieve double-digit growth here as we did in the past years," said Eckard Heidloff, its president and CEO.

The company, the CEO said, is ramping up its expansion in China by expanding its product portfolio and emphasizing innovation.

"We are striving to offer better solutions with innovative approaches," Heidloff said.

The German banking and retail equipment provider, one of world's top three automated teller machine (ATM) makers, inaugurated a new production facility in Shanghai yesterday, tripling its factory space to 15,000 square meters in the city's Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone.

The new facility, costing 10 million euros, will produce passbook and document printers as well as electronic point-of-sale (POS) systems and other components for the domestic market and exports, the CEO said.

The company also opened a software competence center earlier. The center, said Heidloff, is part of his company's worldwide software development network.

"It reflects not only our success in this country to date but also our expectations for future business," he said.

"It demonstrates our long-term commitment to China, which is the most important market (for us) in the Asia-Pacific region, given its huge market size and its economy," said the CEO, who took the post in February.

China accounts for about one-third of Wincor Nixdorf's total sales in the Asia-Pacific and Africa region, which stood at 232 million euros in 2005-06 financial year, Heidloff said, but he declined to give specific figures.

The company, which by shipments took a leading position in China's ATM market last year, will count on retail banking and the retail equipment and solutions segments as its two major business growth drivers in China, the CEO said.

Sales from retail banking equipment and IT solutions account for about 60 percent of its revenues in China.