This week, the ODM Group brought clients to Hangzhou province in China for a pen factory audit. Located in the center of Hangzhou – Ningbo is a vibrant city famous for its active manufacturing industries and renowned port. Due its attractive location, for having raw materials readily accessible (plastics, acrylics and metals), it soon became the ideal location for many Stationery factories (a key supplier to the promotional products industry).

Over the years, there have been much competition between many Pen factories, in terms of design, quality and turn over rate. The Ningbo Pen factory that we visited was equipped with relative standard machinery for the region but has a great capacity for production with good raw material components and meticulous online QC..

The ODM Group manufacture a few million pens each year for airlines, hotels and other key clients so we would like to share some of our expertise in manufacture processes.

First step: cutting steel bars for making different parts of a pen.
penfactory 045penfactory 043

Polishing with little ball bearings in shaking machine
penfactory 046

Making round the steel part and then make hole for decoration
penfactory 053

Heat induction for fortifying and polishing
penfactory 010penfactory 050

QC of main components of pens
penfactory 015penfactory 022

assembling
penfactory 074

printing and heating in the oven
penfactory 037penfactory 001

checking of all the production.  On line quality Control
penfactory 026
Packing and Shipping..
penfactory 092

Pricing for a good quality pen with colour logo can be can be under US$0.10/pc if the volumes are big enough.   ODM makes pens valued anywhere from below US$0.10 to US$10 / pc.