2021-03-05
Kinik-Taiwan’s Grinding King
Esther Tseng / photos Jimmy Lin / tr. by Jonathan Barnard
March 2021
A grinding wheel—or “sand wheel” in Chinese—is neither a wheel made from sand nor a big-wheeled steamship that transports sand, but rather a tool that grinds or cuts a variety of materials such as plastic, wood, and steel. And Kinik Company (formerly China Grinding Wheel Corp.) is not a state-owned enterprise of Taiwan or of mainland China, but rather a privately owned company with a traditional manufacturing background, based in Yingge, New Taipei City.
Kinik, Taiwan’s “grinding king,” has continued to focus on its core strength of grinding. The company manufactures a range of 100,000 different grinding and cutting wheels, from huge ones 1.55 meters in diameter that grind ship crankshafts, to extremely thin ones only 0.03 millimeters thick, used to slice nano-wafers. In recent years Kinik has leveraged its expertise in high-speed grinding to move into products for the semiconductor industry, thus expanding into international markets. It ranks second by global market share in both diamond CMP pad conditioners and reclaimed wafers.