The Cloud chair！As a creative product be featured on the cover of ROTOWORLD magazine to let the world know about China's rotomolding and Rising Sun Rotomolding Technology! 

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The cloud seat, designed for Starway in China, combines perfectly European spirit of simplicity and elegance of the East, to produce a sense of luxury to outside spaces. 20 yrs ago the China rotomoulding industry was basic containers and tanks, mainly using simple equipment and moulds.In 2005 representatives from SPE Rotomolding Division, ARM, ARMA and what is known today as StAR,attended the first China rotomoulding forum in Shanghai. This is when China founded their own national rotomoulding committee, (RPC-CPPIA) as a separate association within their national plastics association. One of their primary goals was to catch up with the rest of the rotomoulding world. I would like to give you a glimpse of their progress.

The China rotational moulding industry has been changing rapidly since 2005. I have attended multiple rotomoulding conferences and ‘Rototours’ within China to improve my understanding of the local industry. ARMA began holding annual conferences in the Asian region in 1997, beginning with Indonesia. In 2005 the ARMA annual conference was in Hong Kong, which coincided with one of the first ARMA organised tours of China rotomoulding factories. Regular readers of Rotoworld® may recall that Bill Spencley of Flexahopper Plastics wrote an article in the July-August 2015 issue highlighting thegrowth and development of the rotomoulding industry in China.

ARMA returned to tour China factories in 2017, prior to the ARM/ARMA Joint Forum in Hawaii. In 2021 it is clear that there are more and more businesses in China who can claim they catching up with the rest of the world.

Xingwei International Home Furnishing Co., Ltd. (Starway) is a modern business integrating R&D, design, manufacturing and sales. Its products cover three major areas: plastic furniture, wooden furniture and upholstered furniture. The company is headquartered in Zhejiang Province, China. It has more than 1,000 employees and an annual turnover of more than USD75 Million.

Starway’s innovation legacy began in 1988 with a plastic chair, and for the past 3 decades they have employed a design led philosophy, using new technology and new material to stay on the forefront of product design for the furniture industry. Bringing European inspired outdoor furniture to China, and the world, was the heart of Starway’s beginnings in 1988. Since then, they have worked alongside some of the worlds’s leading designers such as Stefano Giovannoni, Derby Xu, Enrique Marti, to build a company that delivers contemporary and exceptional indoor and outdoor furniture.

About 15 years ago architects in Shanghai began to break away from western imitation, which had been prevalent during the 1990’s building boom, and began to search for their own architectural vocabulary and characteristics for 21st century China. Like most great designs the cloud seat design may appear simple at first glance, but there was a lot of time and effort invested in project development.

Yu Ting, co-founder of Wutopia Lab in 2013, has designed stores for Duoyun Books, (Cloud Books) including their 24,000 sq ft flagship store which is located literally above the clouds on the 52nd floor of Shanghai’s tallest building, Shanghai Tower. “Hospitality is a good opportunity for us to link our thoughts and designs. Through new materials, we are trying to bring people beautiful spaces. The most rewarding part of the job is that you can make your imagination come true.” Yu Ting explains.

Wutopia recently designed a 2 level 18,500sq ft Duoyun Bookstore in Huangyan, which opened for business in June 2021. Yu Ting had a vision of a cloud slowly rising over and above the Yongning River, where the bookstore is located. The building is wrapped in white aluminium panels to give the feeling of looking at a drifting cloud from a distance. The cloud shaped seats used inside the central courtyard and outside on the riverside terrace are designed to immerse the customer in a dream, where the busy outside world ceases to exist. Two coloured cloud seats were a part of the vision, one white and one blue.

Starway was able to imagine the possibilities of rotational moulding for the design, and contacted Wenling Rising Sun Rotomolding Technology Co., Ltd (Rising Sun) in Zhejiang Province, China. Starway already had a 3 arm 2.5m (98”) Rising Sun carousel oven, so were familiar with the advantages of rotomoulding. Working together they finalised the cloud seat design, in two different sizes incorporating a unique speckled white and speckled blue colour.

The design brief revolved around the customer requirement for only a very few seats, as the seat compliments the new Duoyun bookstore designs. Starway provided the cloud seat design concept to Rising Sun engineers who helped work out the final mould construction details to suit the moulding process. The limited production.

number was ideally suited to rotomoulding and favored a fabricated sheet metal mould. Using mild steel, the shape was easy to form and enabled a quick mould lead time.

Two different mould designs were manufactured to meet the customers specifications. One mould was fabricated in one piece to make the small seat while another set of moulds were fabricated in two separate pieces. 3 moulded segments are joined together to make one larger cloud seat. Rising Sun not only manufacture moulds, and rotational moulding machines, they also offer a contract moulding service to assist businesses turn their designs into reality.

The cloud mould was too big for the Starway carousel oven so Rising Sun moulded the parts in their own 4.0m (157”) shuttle oven, specifically available for contract moulding situations like this. Shuttle machines are ideal for short production runs multilayer materials or complex demoulding or reloading processes. The resin selected for the part was a general purpose LLDPE polyethylene. However, it was a multiple layer system to achieve the colour depth required by the designer. The blue seat has a combination of blue resin and recycled material while the white seat also has a combination of white resin and recycled material. The requirement for recycled material to be included in the rotomoulding process reflects the growing awareness of designers to express sustainable designs in their creations.

Starway are an example of a business which builds strong relationships with manufacturing partners, focusing on quality, developing and improving processes, while embracing the advantages of new technologies - such as rotational moulding. While this article is about Starway and their use of the rotational moulding process for outdoor furniture, our rotomoulding industry should remember that as new technology continues to emerge we must also invest in quality research so we can utilise new technology to remain competitive. In Rotoworld® Issue 6 2020 Paul Nugent reminded us of the late Prof Roy Crawford’s “Vision 2020” published in 2000. Nugent highlighted innovations like wireless mould temperature control, (introduced in 1990 by Crawford and Nugent with the Rotolog system), has had low industry adoption and utilisation. In China, rotomoulding companies like Rising Sun have also recognised the value of this technology and from 2015 they started to offer their own wireless internal air temperature measurement system to their customers. Some Chinese companies are indeed catching up with the rest of the rotomoulding world.

Rising Sun was established almost two decades ago, in 2003. They now manufacture and export a wide variety of machines from basic Rock & Roll open flame to high performance shuttle and carousel biaxial ovens up to 6.5m diameter. Rising Sun attend or exhibit at rotomoulding conferences around the world, and are members of industry associations such as ARM, ARMA, and their own national RPC-CPPIA. Sharon Zhu from Rising.

Sun holds the position of Secretary of RPC-CPPIA. They are the Deputy Director unit of RPC-CPPIA. Sharon Zhu from Rising Sun holds the position of Secretary of RPC-CPPIA. They are the Deputy Director unit of RPC-CPPIA. www.risingsunroto.com Ian Hansen has over 30 years experience in the rotational moulding industry. He is a past President of ARMA and a recognized industry ICON. He has presented to rotational moulding conferences around the world, often on the subject of tank design standards, quality and safety. Ian currently provides advisory services to the global rotomoulding community through his consulting business, Rota Consult. For more information go to www.ianhansenconsult.com