Tainan City, “the Phoenix City” of Taiwan, is a place that keeps reinventing itself. It’s a city that celebrated its 260-year history as the “prefectural capital” of Taiwan during the occupation of the Dutch East India Company, but the history goes even further back. 400 years of continuous urban growth marks Tainan City as the oldest city on the island, while architects uncover indigenous settlements that go back thousands of years.
Looking at Tainan City today, you can see modern architecture standing alongside ancient temples, high-speed trains and tall ships with unfurled sails, representing the port’s long history of trade. Today, Tainan City is the largest city in Taiwan, a community that has a global multi-cultural influence.
Taiwan HODAKA has also undergone a phoenix-like transformation. Founded in 2002, HODAKA specialized in creating strong, lightweight aluminum alloys they used for making bicycles. Since then, as demand for aluminum alloys has grown for applications in the consumable electronics and aerospace industries, the company has grown tenfold.
Today, Taiwan HODAKA is an industry leader in aluminum alloy manufacturing. Billets, extrusion, alloy design and development are driven by industrial applications ranging from bicycles and sports gear to aerospace, automotive, consumer electronics, and more.
“The Ipsen TurboTreater is our primary source for extrusion die heat treatment. Prior to buying the TurboTreater, we had to look for vendors to outsource the work. Sometimes the vendor work’s quality did not meet our standards.
“We are satisfied with the performance of the Ipsen TurboTreater. It gives us control over the heat treatment recipes, and we’re more confident selecting different hot-work steels for our extrusion dies for challenging cases.”
– Dr. Sam Chiang, Ph.D.
In 2025, HODAKA sees opportunities to grow their aerospace business. HODAKA has been operating an Ipsen 12-bar TurboTreater vacuum furnace since it was delivered in 2022. They’ve earned Nadcap certification and have become a certified Boeing supplier for aluminum extrusion profiles. By investing in product research, HODAKA is looking for opportunities to create a deeper understanding of processing aluminum with an eye for developing new products.
“Our main advantage is our ability to provide a high vertical-process-integration for our customers. We want to provide them the experience of having a one-stop shop,” explained Dr. Sam Chiang, Ph.D.
Dr. Chiang is the Director of Research & Development at HODAKA, and he’s excited for the future of the company:
“In the past 22 years, we’ve seen international customers driving the growth of our company. We’ve built a corporate culture around teamwork and cooperation, which gives us the ability to provide customers with total solutions and a rapid response to their demands. That’s why we’ve been able to grow our company.”
Dr. Chaing came to HODAKA after earning his degree in materials science and engineering. When he started with the company, Dr. Chiang worked as a special assistant to the CEO, Dr. Charlie Young. In that role, he worked on special projects, served as a direct resource to customers, and led teams in the factory and the R&D department to meet the customers’ needs. Within two years, Chaing would go on to lead Research and Development.
“As the leader of R&D you should be able to understand what the customer wants, provide your team with a vision of the technical development process, and have enough background to lead and coach your team to meet the target,” Chaing said.
His years working on special projects, a previous job working in a government R&D center, and the training that his leaders and the CEO provided, gave him the tools to execute visionary technical development. Understanding the role that HODAKA plays for their customers is the key to developing better resources.
“In the bicycle industry, for example, the design of the bike is our customer’s specialty. But when it comes to making the materials for the customer, from selecting the alloy composition to the processing of the material, those are HODAKA’s specialties,” Dr. Chiang explained.
“Taiwan HODAKA can provide our partners with integrated total solutions from alloy design to extrusion profile design, die design, fabrication of the extrusion, post-process forming, machining, and surface treatment. This is where we find our competitive advantage.”
– Dr. Sam Chiang, Ph.D.
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