Rojana hedges against flood risks in new estate
Rojana Industrial Park plans to invest Bt4 billion in a new 4,000-rai estate in Prachin Buri as it seeks to diversify operations in light of the potential risk of a repeat of last year's devastating floods.
The company has decided to press ahead with the Rojana Industrial Park Prachin Buri project, targeting automobile, electronics and other groups of clients and opening for land reservations by investors over the remainder of the year, because investment in the industrial sector is still growing significantly due to the country’s promising overall potential, managing director Jirapongs Vinichbutr said yesterday.
The investment trend has resulted in the success of the Rojana Industrial Park Rayong 2 project in Pluak Daeng, in Rayong province, which was initiated last year and has received positive feedback from all investors, he said.
This was the core motivation for the company to acquire 80 per cent of the shares of Prosperity Industrial Estate for more than Bt800 million, as announced yesterday, he added.
The goal now is to implement the Rojana Industrial Park Prachin Buri project on 4,000 rai (640 hectares) in Prachin Buri’s Si Maha Phot district with a Bt4-billion investment.
“One of the reasons the company has chosen to develop in this area is that Prachin Buri is considered as one of the potential areas receiving attention from investors interested in expanding their ventures from Rayong. Our target is to meet rising demand in the automobile, electronics and other sectors,” Jirapongs said.
Rojana Industrial Park and six other industrial estates based in Ayutthaya and Pathum Thani provinces were severely flooded last year. The new in-vestment is seen as an effort to manage its risk by diversifying business into areas at low risk of devastating flooding.
Some factories have relocated their facilities or expanded into other industrial parks at low risk of serious flooding.
Meanwhile, Japanese companies are conducting research into how to reorganise their production chains, since the existing system is not attuned to coping with natural disaster.
The production chain for automobiles, auto parts and some key parts of the electronics industry is concentrated in Thailand because of cost savings, but global supply chains were badly affected when the floods hit the country last year.
