Harwin installs new water treatment plant improves quality, kind to environment

Harwin, the leading hi-rel connector and SMT board hardware manufacturer, has invested in a new water treatment plant at its UK headquarters and manufacturing facility in Portsmouth, improving the quality of finish of its plated parts and reducing the environmental impact Unlike many connector makers, Harwin is a vertically-integrated manufacturing company which keeps not only plating, but all other essential manufacturing operations under one roof. This enables the company to be very innovative and responsive. Utilising previous technology and due to the company's strong growth, the company was using to 7,000 litres of water per hour; the new facility means that the company will use that same amount of water in two weeks. The new plant which uses resin filter technology, supplied by PureTech, cleans all the rinse water and recycles it back into the plating area. The heavy metals - gold and tin - cleansed from the water can be reclaimed. Although this is already a common practice for gold, it is an industry first to reclaim the tin using this process. Comments CEO, Andrew McQuilken: "We should also see an improvement in the water quality used in the plating line, which will help maintain a high quality of plating finish on our products. Currently, by using standard tap water, the level of conductivity in the water is typically 400-600 microsiemens - recycled water after treatment will be below 5 microsiemens. Moreover, this new investment puts ahead of immanent European legislation." www.harwin.co.uk