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Thailand the new focus of carmakers鈥 investment
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At a high-tech factory in the world’s fastest growing auto production hub, industrial robots and white-suited workers put the finishing touches to hundreds of cars rolling off the assembly line each day.
It could be a scene from Toyota City or Detroit, but this is Thailand, a country better known around the world for its beaches and rice paddies.
With major carmakers hit by a global economic downturn, the Southeast Asian nation has emerged as a rare bright spot in recent years.
Thailand’s auto production surged 70 percent in 2012 from the previous year, to 2.48 million vehicles, according to the Paris-based International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers.
In contrast, China and India saw only single digit gains.
Thanks to major investment by Japanese producers as well as US giant Ford, Thailand is Southeast Asia’s most prolific carmaker, streets ahead of nearest-rival Indonesia.
Last year it exported about a million vehicles.
Domestic sales also continued to surge in the first six months of 2013.
Switch from motorcycles
It is a general growth trend mirrored across much of the region as people switch to cars from motorcycles.
Despite worries about Thailand’s wider economic fortunes, carmaker remain bullish about the kingdom’s long-term prospects and have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into high-tech new plants to prove it.
“There might be black clouds and there might be problems, but overall the car industry is driven by people ... people with two wheels who want to get four wheels,” said Uli Kaiser, president of analysts the Automotive Focus Group Thailand.
As the battle for market share intensifies, big carmaker — many from Japan — are ploughing cash into new plants determined to sell more vehicles to Thailand’s burgeoning consumer classes and take advantage of its location in the heart of Southeast Asia’s export markets.
At a Honda factory on the outskirts of Bangkok, more than 1,100 vehicles drive off the production line every day.
The Japanese maker is aiming to churn out 420,000 vehicles a year in Thailand by 2015, when a new US$644 million car plant is expected to open outside Bangkok.
Last month, rival Toyota started production at a sprawling US$340 million assembly plant, its fifth in a country where it sold more than half a million vehicles last year.
The company says it will eventually make 770,000 vehicles on Thai soil each year.
Nissan, meanwhile, has pledged to open a second factory costing US$360 million next year, which will eventually produce 150,000 vehicles a year.
Analysts see a bright future for the Thai car market, predicting 10 percent annual growth in the coming years.
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