Mercedes-Benz Thailand opens regional centre here

Mercedes-Benz has made a crucial step of market development in Thailand by setting up its first regional integrated operations centre with an investment of 660 million baht.

The One-Roof Centre integrates the essential pre- and post-delivery functions of Mercedes-Benz products under the same roof, said Wolfgang Huppenbauer, president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz (Thailand) Ltd, at the centre's launch yesterday.

''The centre is our regional first for an integrated operation centre that provides before-sales, after-sales and dealer services,'' said Mr Huppenbauer.

The centre, manned by 170 Thai staff, also handles auto-parts inventory, pre-delivery product inspection, and human resources training.

''With all of our services and operations integrated under one roof, we will be able to provide more speedy service with great efficiency in all operations,'' said Mr Huppenbauer.

With the new centre, product delivery time has been reduced. Substantial production and logistics expenses have also been saved by putting parts storage and quality testing in the same place.

According to Joachim Schmidt, president and CEO for Central, Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia for Daimler AG, Mercedes-Benz chose Thailand as its strategic location for the establishment of the centre over other Asean countries because of local sales performance.

On average, Mercedes-Benz sells 4,000 cars a year in Thailand, with double-digit growth projected. ''This figure makes Thailand our best market compared to other Asean countries,'' said Dr Schmidt.

''It is also supported by the presence of Thailand as the automobile manufacturing hub in the Asia-Pacific region.''

But Dr Schmidt foresaw rising fuel prices as changing consumers' behaviour.

''Customers take a longer time to make a decision [to buy a car] and also require more fuel-efficient cars so we have allocated billions of euros in research and development to serve this need.''

Yet its sales have risen both in terms of volume and margins this year compared with the same period last year.

The One-Roof Centre is the first investment by Daimler in the region for quite some time. Despite the push for the production of E85 gasohol vehicles by Thai policymakers, Mercedes-Benz has no plan to invest more in the foreseeable future.

''We see that the E85 vehicle market is still very small. Only Brazil and now Thailand use ethanol-fuelled vehicles so we have no plan to act on this yet. We will only continue to produce vehicles according to [majority] market demand,'' said Mr Huppenbauer.

Lack of clarity in the country's long-term energy and fuel policy is also a deterrent to expansion.

In any case, Mr Huppenbauer praised the government's measures as a good policy to promote more use of biofuels and to shift away from fossil crude.

Mercedes-Benz entered the Thai market over 50 years ago through dealers and has operated its own branch for 10 years.

[Source : Bangkok Post // June 15,2008]