Chinese Firm Blow Molds Massive HDPE Tanks

Yankang Plastic Machinery touts machines making 20,000-liter water tanks

There are water tanks, and then there are Yankang blow molded water tanks.  

Established in 2009, Qingdao Yankang Plastic Machinery Co. Ltd. touts huge machines capable of blow molding massive hollow products. On its website, the company says its machines can produce vertical and horizontal water tanks ranging from 200 to 20,000 liters (53 to 5,283 gallons), intermediate bulk container (IBC) tanks, pallets, road barriers, kayaks, solar inner tanks, mobile toilets and more. Its plant covers more than 538,000 square feet.   

Located in Qingdao on China’s east coast between Beijing and Shanghai, the firm offers numerous videos on its website, with one showing the production of a white, 20,000-liter, multilayer, HDPE water tank. It also includes a clip of 24 plant workers, shoulder to shoulder, holding a long banner in front of the machine proclaiming it “The Biggest Blow Molding Machine in the World.”  

Yankang exports to 45 countries and regions and claims 65 percent of the global “large blow molding machine” market. Pet All Manufacturing Inc. of Markham, Ontario, Canada, has been a non-exclusive distributor of Yankang’s machines in the U.S. and Canada for several years, according to Pet All president Ottmar Brandau.  

Largest Blow Molded Tanks Can Weigh Hundreds of Kilos

He estimates that some of the largest molded tanks weigh “several hundred kilos.” When done molding, the tanks are moved out of the machine and rolled onto the shop floor, where workers manually trim flash off them, he said.  

Pet All has sold three or four Yankang machines, but none at the upper end of the size scale. The machines they sold were used to make such products as kayaks and window-washer fluid containers. He suggested that China and India are the biggest markets for the largest types of tanks.  

A couple of U.S. blow molding industry experts said they have never seen any blow molded tanks this huge. Brandau said he plans to visit the Qingdao factory for the first time in September.