Slow recovery for flood-hit Thai plants – ‘We’re in the wrong place’
AYUTTHAYA, December 18 (AFP) – Piles of rubbish, rusting furniture and discarded machinery litter one of Thailand’s top high-tech parks, a former symbol of economic prowess laid to waste by weeks of flooding. Many of the companies located in the country’s industrial heartland say it will be several months at least before their operations return to normal. Investor confidence in the kingdom is likely to take even longer to recover. At least one major manufacturer, Sanyo Semiconductor, is pulling the plug on its operations in hard-hit Ayutthaya province north of Bangkok altogether, while others are considering moving to safer areas. “We’ve realized, obviously with hindsight, that we’re in the wrong place ― we’re in a flood zone,” said Richard Han, chief executive of semiconductor maker Hana Microelectronics whose plant was badly affected. Even if large dykes were built around the industrial parks, production would have to be suspended if the area is flooded again because access to the site would become too difficult, he said. “My customers understand that,” Han added. “They are moving their business elsewhere.” The disaster caused billions of dollars of damage and dealt a severe blow to the global supply chain. There are also questions about whether insurers will continue to cover companies located in the flood-prone region. Japanese high-tech giant Toshiba still has no idea when operations will resume at eight of its affected factories as new machines and parts are needed and electricity and telephone links have not yet been fully restored. “We already destroyed more than 100,000 damaged goods in our warehouse,” a spokeswoman said. At the Rojana Industrial Park, the more than 2-meter-deep water that overwhelmed flood defenses in October and poured into a host of factories has receded, and a clean-up operation by a small army of workers is under way.
