Malvern Instruments has opened a new head office in Shanghai for all its sales and marketing activities in China. Malvern began direct operations in China in April 2004 in order to provide more direct support to customers in this market and was initially based in temporary offices. Now housed in the new Spectris headquarters, Malvern’s new offices include a unique state-of-the-art customer demonstration and training facility. This will provide sample analysis, customer training, contract and consultation services for the whole of China. A full customer support center has also been established, offering in-house repairs and service engineer training for China and Asia. Satellite offices in Chengdu, Guangzhou, Beijing and Xian will provide customer support personnel for local access, dedicated to delivering a fast response. Malvern’s well equipped laboratory facilities in Shanghai house a complete range of Malvern particle characterization and rheology systems, together with a full suite of ancillary particle characterization equipment and materials. As the Asia center of excellence, it will host regular particle size training schools, which in future will be extended to cover all instrumentation and technology types. Not only does this facility enable Malvern to provide services directly to customers in China, it also allows the company to extend its training and support facilities to the wider Asia Pacific region. Further support is provided through Malvern’s website, which, in addition to product and applications information, features ‘on demand’ audiovisual presentations that can be downloaded and run at the viewer’s convenience www.malvern.com.cn. Currently 20 Malvern personnel work in the company’s offices in China. This includes the applications-focused salesforce and two dedicated applications specialists. As well as marketing its own materials characterization systems, Malvern is also the exclusive distributor in China for Quantachrome, providing instruments for further characterizing the properties of powders and porous materials.