Bosch looking to hammer home its new regional advantages

More engineering firms are hoping to capitalise on Vietnam’s booming industrial development

Covering 160,000 square metres at Long Thanh Industrial Zone,  the plant will produce up to 1.6 million pushbelts in its first year, accounting for 40 per cent of pushbelts produced by Bosch Group.

With the majority of Bosch’s customers for CVT (continuously variable transmission) technology located in Asia, it expects the production volume to reach 2.3 million units by 2015 to support the growth of the automobile industry, in particular in Japan and China.

Bosch gasoline systems vice president Coen Booijmans said: “Asia, especially, plays an important role in our growth. Not only the mature Japanese market, but also the significantly fast-growing automobile markets in China, India and Korea”.

In 2010, over 38 million vehicles were built in this market – more than half the number produced worldwide. Of which, about six million CVT units  annually found their way to the market. The majority of them were fitted with a pushbelt which could be fitted into vehicles ranging from sub-compact cars to sports utility vehicles with diesel, gasoline or hybrid engines. 

For the Long Thanh plant, it is the first hi-tech CVT pushbelt production site for Bosch in Asia and the second of its kind worldwide after Tilburg in the Netherlands.

Bosch Group gasoline systems president Rolf Bulander said the Long Thanh plant would be a key manufacturing site in Asia-Pacific.

“Vietnam is an attractive investment location to Bosch, due to the country’s social and political stability, and the favourable economic reforms by the government, especially since Vietnam became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO),” said Bulander.

The good level of education and the willingness to invest into infrastructure, like the Long Thanh international airport, also supported Bosch to come to the Long Thanh Industrial Zone.

 In the near future, to meet the fast increasing demand of its customers, the German supplier plans an extension to the current facility, enabling it to build its own components for pushbelt assembly. The extension construction is expected to start in July, 2011 and finish by mid 2012.

From the beginning of next year, it will start serial production of the second component.

Vo Quang Hue, managing director of Robert Bosch Vietnam, said: “As the manufacturing of these CVT pushbelts involve state-of-the-art, specialised production, we have hired local Vietnamese talents to join our operations and sent them to Europe for several months of training. As a multinational company, Bosch has always adopted a local-for-local strategy to develop the talent of its local associates. Vietnam is no exception”.    

In early May, Robert Bosch Vietnam will open its first software and engineering centre in Southeast Asia, in Ho Chi Minh City. The centre will develop engineering applications and information technology enabled services to support the Bosch group of companies globally.