Featured

Vietnam is Asia’s new tech manufacturing hub

It all started in 2010. Intel built its $1 billion chip manufacturing plant in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. Vietnam’s electronic manufacturing dream had arrived. Gone would be the days of textile and food exporting. People were saying hello to a hi-tech Vietnam. But later in 2011 and early 2012, the dream was dwindling, as the economy was shot and there was an environment that didn’ t play well for foreign investors, and that was turning people off. The latter half of 2012 saw a change, with electronics factories popping up everywhere as you can see in the list below (dollar figures indicate amount each company has committed to its Vietnamese factory): * Bujeon Electronics (from South Korea), $10 million, October 2012 * Brother Vietnam (Japan), $25 million, December 2012 * Nidec Seimitsu (Japan), $40 million, July 2012 * SOC Vietnam (Japan), $62.5 million, November 2012 * JBL (USA), $100 million, June 2012 * Terumo BCT (USA, Japan), $94 million, May 2012 * Fuji Xerox (Japan), $120 million, November 2013 * Nokia (Finland), $300 million, early 2013 * Samsung Electronics (South Korea), $2.2 billion by 2020, November 2012 Of course, the most significant newcomers in this list are Samsung and Nokia. Nokia is still the dominant player in the Vietnamese mobile market and Samsung contributes 10 percent of Vietnam’s exports. Besides Nokia, most of these electronics manufacturers are from South Korea and Japan. The main draw for companies from these two countries is the low labour wages. In some cases, Vietnamese workers can be paid as little as one-third of Chinese labour costs. Cheap labour is Vietnam’s new brand. And so armed with this low-cost labour, Vietnam will soon become known for hi-tech manufacturing. Textiles are no longer Vietnam’s biggest export. With small companies like Setech Viet building small consumer […]

Foldable micro electric car

PIC CAP Armadillo-T is a small and light pure-electric car that can fold in half for convenient parking. DAJEON, KOREA: Looking for a parking space for hours at a busy shopping mall or being stuck on roads jammed with cars releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide are all-too-familiar scenes for city dwellers. A group of researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) recently developed a possible solution to such problems: a foldable, compact electric vehicle that can be utilised either as a personal car or part of the public transit system to connect major transportation routes within a city. In-Soo Suh, Associate Professor of the Graduate School for Green Transportation at KAIST and his research team introduced a prototype micro electric car called ‘Armadillo-T,’ whose design is based on a native animal of South America, the armadillo, a placental mammal with a leathery armour shell. The research team imitated the animal’s distinctive protection characteristic of rolling up into a ball when facing with threat from predators. Just as armadillos hide themselves inside the shell, Armadillo-T tucks its rear body away, shrinking its original size of 2.8 meters (110 inches) down to almost half, 1.65 meters (65 inches), when folding. Armadillo-T is a four-wheel-drive, all-electric car with two seats and four in-wheel motors. Since the motors are installed inside the wheels, and the 13.6 kWh capacity of lithium-ion battery pack is housed on the front side, the battery and motors do not have to change their positions when the car folds. This not only optimizes the energy efficiency but also provides stability and ample room to drivers and passengers. Once folded, the small and light (weighs 450 kg) electric vehicle takes up only one-third of a 5-meter parking space, the standard parking size in Korea, allowing three […]

Asian markets uninspired by Bernanke comments

Asia-Pacific equity markets were forced to look inward after testimony from Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke that contained no real surprises. A few unexpected words from Mr Bernanke can have markets racing, but in Wednesday’s Capitol Hill testimony the Fed chairman merely reiterated that plans to scale back stimulative measures weren’t tied to a pre-set timetable. US markets were relieved with both stocks and bonds rising, but there was little follow-through in Asia. Crédit Agricole said Mr Bernanke’s comments created a positive backdrop for the region in the absence of other driving factors. Mr Bernanke’s appearance before the House Financial Services Committee was the first of two Congressional outings for the Fed chairman this week, with a repeat performance in front of the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday. With no press conference planned for the July Federal Open Market Committee meeting, the testimony from Mr Bernanke will be the Fed’s best communications opportunity for some weeks. Indications of stronger economic growth and job creation in the US economy are paving the way for theFed to throttle back its easy monetary policy. That should eventually allow traders to focus on economic fundamentals, rather than reading the runes of central bank officials. But until the Fed successfully negotiates an exit, markets are likely to remain in thrall to the words of Mr Bernanke. In China and Hong Kong, the Shanghai and Hang Seng indices were 1.1 and 0.1 per cent lower, respectively, after the International Monetary Fund warned that China was “too reliant on investment and credit” and urged swift reforms. Meanwhile, fresh data showed new home prices in China rose in 63 of the 70 cities surveyed in June versus May, which could spur Beijing to implement new measures to cool the property market. Overall, new home prices were up 6.8 […]

CEO confidence in growth down

Only 36% of CEOs worldwide are ‘very confident’ of their company’s growth prospects in the next 12 months, according to PwC’s 16th Annual Global CEO Survey. That’s down from 40% who were ‘very confident’ of short term growth last year and 48% in 2011, but still above the lows of 31% and 21% in 2010 and 2009. Looking at the economy generally, 28% of CEOs say the global economy will decline further in 2013, and only 18% predict economic improvement; 52% say it will stay the same. While the CEOs outlook remains gloomy, the forecast is an improvement on last year when 48% of CEOs predicted the global economy would decline in 2012. CEOs in Western Europe were least confident of short term revenue growth. Faced with ongoing recession, just 22% 0f Western European CEOs said they were very confident of growth, down from 27% last year and 39% in 2011. Confidence in short term growth also declined in North America to 33% (42% in 2012) and in Asia Pacific to 36% (42% in 2012). Even in Africa, seen by many as the next high-growth economy, CEO confidence in company growth slipped to 44%, from 57% last year. Latin American CEOs, however, bucked the trend. Their short term confidence rose to 53% of CEOs, up slightly from last year. At the country level, confidence varied widely: CEOs are most confident in Russia where 66% are very confident of revenue growth in 2013, closely followed by India (63%) and Mexico (62%). They were trailed by countries including Brazil (44%), China (40%), Germany (31%), the US (30%), the UK (22%), Japan (18%), France (13%) and finally Korea, where only 6% of CEOs are very confident of revenue growth in the year ahead. Longer term, overall CEO confidence remained stable; 46% of CEOs […]

Remanufacturing PIC Singapore establishes PIC

Remanufacturing Centre established

The Advanced Remanufacturing & Technology Centre will drive value-added manufacturing activities here through private-public R&D collaborations. SINGAPORE: The establishment has occurred of the Advanced Remanufacturing & Technology Centre (ARTC), the first centre in Asia to look into research and development (R&D) to develop technologies for remanufacturing that can be readily adopted by industry. These technologies will enable companies and businesses to translate end-of-life products into ‘good as new’ ones for the market through a sustainable process, contributing to greater cost and materials savings and, potentially, higher profit margins. Six industry leaders, namely Boeing, Rolls-Royce plc, Siemens Industry Software, ABB, FUCHS Lubricants and Carl Zeiss, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Centre to look into collaborative R&D to bridge technological gaps in remanufacturing for the aerospace, oil & gas, marine, energy, automotive and engineering industries. In doing so, ARTC will tap on A*STARÍs Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology’s (SIMTech) R&D expertise in automation, manufacturing systems and processes, as well as the strong capabilities of local universities such as Nanyang Technological University, to carry out R&D in production-ready technologies in the areas of repair and restoration, surface enhancement and product verification. Eight local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have also joined the Centre to co-develop technologies along with leading multinational corporations (MNCs). By engaging local SMEs and MNCs, ARTC is encouraging leading companies to develop new high value manufacturing activities in Singapore while cultivating the local supply chain in this new growth area. Said Dr Raj Thampuran, Executive Director of the Science and Engineering Research Council, A*STAR, ‘The Advanced Remanufacturing & Technology Centre will help industries realise remanufacturing’s economic and environmental potential through public-private collaborative R&D. Member companies can leverage on our spectrum of relevant capabilities, advanced infrastructure and high quality talent, while at the same time contribute to value-added […]