A machine-tool builder that stayed the size where the owner still answers the phone.

HENGYUE was founded in 1989 in a two-bay workshop in Taichung, repairing lathes for the hardware factories around the harbor. The first export order — six manual lathes to a trading company in Hamburg — shipped in 1993, packed by the same hands that built them.

Thirty-odd years later the workshop is bigger, the lathes have servo motors, and the Hamburg customer still orders. What has not changed is how an order travels: one engineer owns it from spec review to container loading, and the person who answers your e-mail is the person who can walk to the machine.