afternoon highlight (21/09/12/163/638) DRB-HICOM plans Asean car

DRB-HICOM plans Asean car


'Year 2020 is the earliest possible date which we may come out with an Asean car,' says DRB-HICOM's group managing director

DRB-HICOM Bhd, the country's biggest automotive company, is planning to come out with an Asean car by as early as 2020, its group managing director Datuk Mohd Khamil Jamil said.

Mohd Khamil told this to Business Times on the sidelines of the company's annual general meeting yesterday.

"Year 2020 is the earliest possible date which we may come out with an Asean car," Mohd Khamil said, adding that the Asean car concept is one of the long-term projects which the company is looking into.

In January this year, DRB-HICOM told the stock exchange that one of the reasons it was buying Proton Holdings Bhd was because it could help develop Proton's presence in the regional market as an Asean car.

DRB-HICOM bought a 42.7 per cent stake in Proton from Khazanah Nasional Bhd for RM1.29 billion, and subsequently took the company private.

According to Frost & Sullivan in an August report, the Asean region is tipped to become the sixth biggest automotive market in the world by 2018.

The report stated that by 2018, vehicle sales in the region is expected to grow to 4.7 million units, versus 2.4 million units sold in 2011.

Despite the huge appetite to own automobiles, the region does not have a single homegrown car that is able to stamp its mark in the region.

Rather, countries in the region such as Malaysia and Thailand have been making a name for themselves by helping assemble cars from as far away as Germany and Japan.

Thailand has gotten so good at it that today it is known as the "Detroit of the East".

With this in mind, Mohd Khamil said, DRB-HICOM had started initial discussions with a few foreign strategic partners to pair up with national carmaker Proton.

He explained that the tie-up could be on many areas such as platform-sharing, and factory space utilisation.

Meanwhile, analysts who had met the DRB-HICOM management team in August, opined that exporting vehicles to the Asean region is important as it will help mitigate the impact of a staturated car market on the home front.

One of the major advantages for DRB-HICOM is that its key partners, namely Japan's Honda Motor Co and Volkswagen AG, have chosen Malaysia as their regional manufacturing hub.

The Japanese carmaker said in June that it plans to make Malaysia its regional hub for the manufacture of hybrids like the Jazz and the Insight, while a year ago, Germany's Volkswagen said that it had picked Pekan as its regional hub.

According to HwangDBS, DRB-HICOM is also in talks with major automotive players to acquire startegic stakes in Proton's Tanjong Malim plant.

Source : New Straits Times
Date : 21 September 2012
afternoon highlight (21/09/12/163/638)