The brakes are on and it’s full speed ahead for the industry after the first-ever brakes sector conference in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations region attracts 272 participants in Thailand.
Organizers says the Bangkok get-together, designed to share the most up-to-date technical information about braking and brake systems with people in the friction industry, is considered so successful they immediately decided to make it an annual event.
It was jointly organized by Acme International (Thailand), a supplier of performance material for friction industries, and Compact International, one of the largest Thai-owned brake-pad producers.
Organizing committee general chairman Boonyawat Teeraprawatekul, manager of Acme’s performance materials business unit, says the 2-day event attracted car companies, application engineers, researchers, academics, management and business owners involved with passenger and commercial vehicles and motorcycles.
Boonyawat tells The Nation newspaper participants included automakers such as Toyota, Honda, Proton, Mitsubishi, Mazda and MG, as well as manufacturers of braking systems, brakes and friction materials, raw-material suppliers, chemical and machinery producers, academics and public-sector representatives.
A theme at the meeting was that enhancing technical knowledge and updating trends are important with the suggestion that producers shift away from price competition and pay more attention to R&D.
“Every maker should start to pay interest to R&D lest they find it hard to survive in the future,” Boonyawat says.
About 45% of the participants were Thais with other attendees from other ASEAN countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, and the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India and Europe. The conference was supported by the ASEAN New Car Assessment Program.
Compact International Research and Development Director Meechai Sriwiboon tells the newspaper the objective was to upgrade knowledge and understanding of entrepreneurs in ASEAN’s braking-system industry and to build a unified network of the producers in the region.
“The future of ASEAN depends on our unity,” he says. “And we’re talking about a market of more than 600 million people, which is growing in purchasing power. Hence we should take a larger view to cover ASEAN, not just Thailand.”
ASEAN members produce more than 4 million vehicles a year.
The braking-system market in Thailand is estimated to be worth TB6 billion ($184.3 million), with the OEM segment accounting for TB3.5 billion ($107.5 million) of the total.
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