Boonsithi Chokwatana is chairman of Saha Group, Thailand’s main client merchandise conglomerate. That is half 18 of a 30-part series.
Within the 1970s, Thailand’s factories had been concentrated in Bangkok. Financial development led corporations to broaden, however with out correct city planning they simply unfold with none management. The atmosphere in and across the densely packed factories shortly deteriorated.
In Japan, there are a lot of circumstances the place the top workplace is in Tokyo, however firm factories are in rural areas. With regards to securing labor, it was apparent that factories wanted to be positioned in rural components of Thailand, too, I believed. That was additionally in step with the “emphasis on regional improvement” that the Thai authorities included in its third five-year plan starting in 1971.
I made a decision to do every thing myself, beginning with the creation of an industrial park, as a result of I used to be satisfied Japanese producers would speed up their enlargement into Thailand. We had established a holding firm to function some extent of contact for negotiations on joint ventures. Along with that, if land for the factories was already secured, negotiations would go even faster.
My father didn’t object, however he was not totally on board, both. He was fearful concerning the money movement. On the time, Saha Group was poorly capitalized and relied on financial institution loans for working capital. I defined to him that we’d not make investments suddenly, however would transfer ahead with the development step by step, and he gave the venture his approval.
The primary process was to discover a location. We discovered a possible website in Samut Prakan Province, close to the mouth of the Chao Phraya River. The location was simply 20 km from Bangkok, however the floor was tender and never fitted to industrial use. It was later changed into a shrimp farm.
So as a substitute my closest youthful brother, Narong, and I checked out Sriracha, Chonburi Province, about 120 km southeast of Bangkok. Sriracha is the place Thailand’s largest port, Laem Chabang, will likely be constructed. These days the journey takes about an hour and a half by automobile, however again then there have been no highways. I keep in mind it took fairly some time, driving on slender, bumpy roads.
The location was a sugar cane area owned by the government-affiliated Krungthai Financial institution. There was a port close by and the bottom was strong. It was additionally at a excessive elevation, so there was no want to fret about flooding. I believed it was the proper place, so I began planning.
As an alternative of shifting complete vegetation from Bangkok, we determined to extend manufacturing capability in Sriracha. Whereas there have been no fears of flooding, there have been considerations concerning the water provide. So we targeted on merchandise that don’t use a lot water.
One after the other, we constructed factories for shoe processing, day by day requirements, underwear materials and instantaneous noodles.
It was tough to win over the native residents. At the moment Sriracha was a quiet farming and fishing village, with solely an oil refinery, and so they had been cautious of individuals from Bangkok like us.
“There will likely be extra locations in your youngsters to work after they develop up,” we defined to them.
Naturally, it can be crucial to not inconvenience residents with drainage issues or smoke from factories, however we went one step additional and made coexistence with the neighborhood a high precedence. Relatively than isolating the positioning from the encompassing space, we step by step developed parks, markets, faculties, and outlet shops for manufactured items, aiming to create a spot for locals to go to. That is why we referred to as it an “industrial park.”
The park began at 80 hectares and has since expanded to 288 hectares. Greater than 60 corporations have moved in, 90% of which had been from Saha Group. There have been many joint ventures with Japanese corporations, and about 6,000 Japanese residing in Sriracha.
After that, industrial parks sprang up one after one other — within the Prachinburi Province within the east, in Lamphun Province, close to the industrial capital Chiang Mai within the north and in Mae Sot in Tak Province alongside the border with Myanmar.
The essential precept is for group corporations to maneuver into the parks, however in addition they promote plots exterior corporations.
There are lots of conglomerates in Thailand, however apart from the devoted corporations that run the commercial parks, Saha Group is the one one which operates its personal industrial parks.
This column is a part of The Nikkei’s “My Private Historical past” (“Watashi no Rirekisho”) sequence of autobiographies. The sequence first appeared in The Nikkei in 1956. Since then, all kinds of world-changing people have written or dictated their life tales for publication.
