MTA Vietnam 2014: Growing bigger and better every year

After attending MTA Vietnam for a number of years now, the one thing I find to be always uplifting about the event is the ever increasing optimism foreign companies have towards Vietnam and its potential future economic growth. In stark contrast where manufacturers in a lot of other countries are tightening their belts or contemplating survival strategies to maintain operations, Vietnam is certainly a shining star. I’m not suggesting that Vietnam is not without its teething problems. There are always ups & downs when a country starts to become part of the broader global financial community, and I think it would be safe to say that all of Asia can testify to this fact. But one has to admire Vietnam’s development to date and their ability to move forward in a positive, albeit cautious way.

 

Tee Boon Teong, Deputy Chief Representative, Singapore Exhibition Services

This year at MTA Vietnam, held in HCMC recently, there were a record amount of people in attendance. Mr Tee Boon Teong, Deputy Chief Representative, Singapore Exhibition Services’ in Ho Chi Minh City said, “We have seen that the increasing support from all relevant manufacturing industries as group visitors has almost doubled – from 163 groups last year to a high of 295 groups. This corresponds with the industry’s investment needs as official statistics from HCMC Department of Planning has shown, with a significant increase in foreign direct investment into Southern Vietnam over the last year”. 

 

Candy Ong, Managing Director, South East Asia, Blum Novotest

BLUM NOVOTEST

On offer at this year’s MTA Vietnam was an array of products from hand tools to high tech lasers, and as usual, there were some new comers to Vietnam and some companies that have been making the commercial pilgrimage for a number of years; companies such as BLUM, a German manufacturer of measuring and testing equipment catering to the automotive and hydraulics industries. 

Candy Ong, Managing Director of the company’s South East Asian operations said that Blum is based in Singapore with also a representative office in Thailand, and we’ve been trading here in the region, including Vietnam for around 7 years. Candy said that the company manufactures a number of products such as automatic measuring and crack testing machine for disk brakes and drums, flexible 2D production measuring machine, flexible eddy current crack testing machine, multidimensional gauging units, and customer specific designed post-process solutions. 

Candy mentioned that the company has always felt very positive about the manufacturing growth here in Vietnam as companies are increasing their need for a lot more precision parts outsourced to domestic manufacturers, so the growth  of SMEs in Vietnam has increased beyond all expectations. With this increase in demand for locally manufactured precision parts comes a need for high precision machines to meet these increasing manufacturing demands, and that’s where Blum Novotest comes into the picture. Over the past 7 years we have seen a marked increase in the country’s openness to new technologies compared to 7 years ago. Blum, as with a lot of companies I spoke to at MTA Vietnam, don’t only sell machines, they sell solutions to their customers, and provide them with  the know how to maintain stability in their production processes.

 

Lenard Siew (left), Executive, Nikon Singapore Industrial Marketing Division

NIKON SINGAPORE

Another company exhibiting at this year’s MTA Vietnam and that also specialises in Metrology and inspection equipment was NIKON SINGAPORE. Lenard Siew, Executive of the company’s Industrial Marketing Division said that although most people associate the name Nikon with quality cameras, my area of operations deal with manufacturing precision measuring and inspection equipment and software such as X-ray and CT Inspection equipment, Industrial Microscopes, CNC Video Measuring System, which incorporates some of our latest laser technology, and that we have on display here at MTA. Lenard explained that our equipment is used predominantly in the areas of reverse engineering, inspection and of course, quality assurance which is becoming more of a priority issue here in Vietnam. It’s also important to understand Lenard said that our customers are not just looking for machines, they’re looking for solutions for their production and quality issues. 

Lenard also mention that there is more and more interest in non-contact measurement solutions where Nikon are industry leaders. Nikon have been coming to Vietnam for over 10 years and Lenard pointed out that the industry here has certainly become more and more educated during this time, and unlike a lot of companies that set up some level of operation in the country, Nikon are more than happy with having a distributer promoting and selling their products.

 

Iain Soh, Laser Specialist, Yamazaki Mazak

YAMAZAKI MAZAK

The next stop on my journey around MTA Vietnam was at the stand of one the world leading manufacturers of machine tools, YAMAZAKI MAZAK. Mazak offers a large selection of machining and turning equipment such as multi-tasking machine, vertical and horizontal machining centres, CNC turning machines, as well as laser processing/cutting machines. Mazak are a Japanese company with manufacturing facilities in Japan, U.S. and China. 

Iain Soh, the company’s laser specialist pointed out that the company’s China manufacturing operations is predominantly servicing the Chinese domestic market, and we manufacture some of our smaller turning machines in Singapore where I’m based, but all of our laser cutting machines are completely manufactured in Japan. Iain went onto say that although we’ve had a presence here in Vietnam for over 8 years, and a recognised brand in the area of machine tools, we are still not that well know for our laser cutting product, so coming to MTA gives us a great opportunity to educate the market about our laser technology.

 

Mr Lee Wai Yip, General Manager, Hurco Singapore

HURCO

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of the international companies I speak to at MTA each year run their Asian/Pacific operations out of Singapore. Apart from being ideally located to service the region, the island nation’s government has for a long time made a great deal of effort attracting multinationals enterprises to the country through offering an array of financial and tax concessions. One American company at MTA Vietnam that have been managing their South East Asian operations out of Singapore for over 23 years was HURCO, manufacturers of machine tool and process control technology such as, vertical and horizontal CNC machining centres, auto bend machines, turning centres, as well as the control units and software applications that keep the units functioning. 

Mr Lee Wai Yip, General Manager of Hurco’s Singapore operations, said that apart from South East Asian region, they also service Taiwan, Korea and Australia. Lee went on to say that although it’s an American company and that all the engineering, the research and development and quality control are done in the US, the company moved it manufacturing facilities from the U.S. to Taiwan around 15 years ago and now have 4 factories there manufacturing over 50 different types of machines of varying sizes from 3 to 24 tons. Lee pointed out that here in Vietnam they see a lot of the large domestic and foreign owned companies now outsourcing to local manufactures, which is increasing the demand for high quality machines.

 

Dr Hans-Peter Laubscher (right), Managing Director, Trumpf Asia Pacific

TRUMPF

My last stop at this year’s MTA Vietnam was at one of the exhibition’s lager display stands; TRUMF Asia/Pacific, a German company that manufactures machine tools, power tools, solid state lasers, CO2 and marking lasers, and a new range of fibre lasers cutting machines. 

Dr Hans-Peter Laubscher, Managing Director of Trumpf Asia Pacific said that Trumpf is a family own company with about 10,000 employees worldwide and manufacturing facilities around the globe, in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and also in the U.S. and China. 

Hans-Peter explained that although Trumpf started in Germany over 90 years ago we are now truly a global company that cater to number of industries such as electronics, aerospace, automotive to name a few. The company originally made a name for itself with punching/nibbling equipment, but in 1985 we started producing equipment using laser technology, and now around 70% of our global sales are driven by laser and includes universal tools for cutting, welding, marking, drilling, coating, hardening and structural surface processing. Originally CO2 lasers were the standard, but notorious for their power consumption, but over the past 5 or 6 years there has been a big move away from CO2 into what is called solid state lasers or fibre lasers when the laser is guided by the fibre, which alleviates the need for the more complex process of using mirrors. 

Hans-Peter went onto say that Trumpf has been in Vietnam since 2006, and in those early days it was mainly punching and bending machines, but for the past 4 or 5 years it’s mainly been about laser cutting machines.

-Anthony Evans

Vapormax