Amata woos firms with floodwall promise
Amata Corp sees an opportunity to attract companies that have suffered from inundated plants to move their production facilities to its industrial estates by protecting them with permanent floodwalls.
“This should prevent their plants from flooding in the future,” CEO Viboon Kromadit said last week.
The company recently discussed the possibility of building a concrete perimeter around Amata Nakorn in Chon Buri and Amata City in Rayong, he said.
“The walls should give sufficient assurance for relocating and existing factories. Though this will require hundreds of millions of baht in investment, we’re certain that our industrial estates will be spared from the current disaster, which devastated those in Ayutthaya and Pathum Thani.”
The disaster serves as a reminder to all industrial-estate operators to prepare proper infrastructure, which should include disaster prevention plans, he said.
Encompassing 15,500 rai, Amata Nakorn Industrial Estate houses 405 plants, both operating and under construction.
The company had shown the flood protection plans to all operators to ensure that the natural disaster would not hit the factories. It has also closely monitored the flood situation through constant contact with government units in Chon Buri.
The industrial estate, located 10 kilometres from the Bang Pakong River and 3km off the coast, has a reservoir capable of absorbing 20-30 million cubic metres of water. The operator is now working with Chon Buri authorities to increase the area’s holding capacity up to 100 million cubic metres of water.
According to the Labour Protection and Welfare Department, at least 14,818 factories nationwide with 678,227 employees were struck by the disaster.
Anusorn Sangnimnuan, president of Bangchak Petroleum, one of the affected companies, said it is bearing a loss of about Bt80-Bt100 million a month from the closure of its oil depot and solar power plant in Ayutthaya’a Bang Pa-In district as well as a drop in fuel sales and extra expenses to defend its properties. It should take about two months to restart the power plant, which contributes Bt60 million in monthly revenue.
The floods have cut Bangchak’s fuel sales by 300,000 litres a day or an average 6-7 per cent of pre-flood levels. Diesel sales are down 10 per cent and gasohol down 4-5 per cent.
The company’s main concern now is the safety of its refinery and oil depot on Sukhumvit Road, near the oil depots of PTT, Esso (Thailand), Shell and Chevron, as they are located on the floodway. A 3.5-metre floodwall is in place.
