Only seven months on from the Japanese earthquake, and just as the industry there and its tentacles overseas are getting back to normal, worse than usual annual floods in Thailand are starting to play havoc with the autobiz there.
On this side of the world, Thailand is a place you perhaps go for some winter sun, to see some interesting beaches and scenery, such as ancient temples.
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Or, if you are a Ford, Mazda, Chevrolet or Isuzu distributor, you pop over and order the odd batch of one-tonne pickup trucks once in a while – that’s where they’re (almost) all made these days.
If you are in Asia-Pacific, though, chances are your new Ford (Fiesta), Nissan or Honda car was actually made in Thailand, or many of the bits in those locally-assembled, came from the kingdom. If you bought the latest Nissan March in Japan it, too, was assembled in Thailand.
And, if you are building certain Hondas in India, some of your parts come from the Thai ‘mother plant’.
The problem here, as was the case in Japan last month, is that most automakers have come out alright, apart from Honda, but smaller suppliers in the same region have been affected. That cascades up to the tier one and two suppliers and on to the automakers. Cue frantic searching for replacements for Thai parts from Japan and other countries.
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