Volvo to make assembly plant in Thailand its export base of UD trucks
VOLVO GROUP (Thailand) Co, the country's sole distributor of Volvo and UD trucks, has announced that Thailand is to be an assembly base for UD trucks for overseas delivery after an investment of Bt2 billion to expand capacity of its plant on Bang Na-Trat
Company president Jacques Michel said that of the countries |in Southeast Asia, Thailand had high potential to be the assembly base for global automotive exports as it had strong supporting industries.
Volvo Thailand has invested Bt2 billion to raise its annual assembly capacity to 20,000 units of UD trucks and 4,500 units of Volvo trucks. Part of the production will serve North America, Latin America and Southeast Asia.
“We do not export to India and China as those two countries have their own assembly facilities,” he said.
The company has debuted the UD Quester in Thailand. It expects to deliver the locally built vehicles to Thai customers in the final quarter of this year, while exports will begin in the first quarter of next year to Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam.
“Especially in the Philippines, we have already received orders without [purchasers] seeing the vehicle and its specifications because the buyers are very confident in the Volvo Group,” Michel said.
For the Thai market, Michel said UD Trucks would concentrate on a different group of customers than those who buy Volvo trucks, who have special requirements for their vehicles. However, both brands will enjoy the same service standards, as Volvo Thailand has invested Bt3 billion on expanding its nationwide sales and service network to 17 outlets, which are expected to be completely opened before the end of the year.
Michel said that as of this month, the company had sold 340 UD and 530 Volvo trucks this year.
“The heavy-duty-truck market in Thailand has high potential to grow because the demand will increase in accordance with the economic growth of the country,” he said.
“The most important [factor is] that Thailand will join the AEC [Asean Economic Community] scheme in 2015 and Thailand will benefit from the situation as a result of the borderless transportation from other countries, creating demand for servicing of the vehicles that come from other countries around Thailand.”
Japanese truck-maker Nissan Diesel was taken over by Sweden-based Volvo in 2007, and later changed its name to UD Trucks.
