There is a long history of casting in Thailand dating back to around 3600BC when cast bronze spearheads and tools were first produced in the Northeastern province of Udon Thani. Casting as an industry started to develop in the region around Bangkok about 150 years ago for the production of cannons and hand tools. Growth continued at a relatively slow pace until about 30 years ago. Rapid industrialisation then took place so that during the boom period leading up to the 1997 SE Asian financial crisis, many foundries were expanded to increase production of cast components for the growing automotive and motorcycle industry. Many of these newer plants were joint ventures with Japanese companies, the levels of investment in plant and equipment enabling them to become world-competitive [1]. These automotive foundries, together with the SME jobbing and other foundries in Thailand, were badly affected by the recession but since then they have gradually recovered and are now in near full production. Recovery in the non-automotive sector has been much slower but is improving. There are no figures available just for the foundry industry but in the Thai industrial sector as a whole the average utilisation of capacity was 67 percent for the first quarter of 2003, up 13 percent from the same period in 2002. Many companies, notably in the automotive, motorcycle and steel businesses, reported that they had higher capacity utilisation than before the 97 crisis. As previously reported in MCT [2,3] the continued expansion in car and pick-up truck assembly offers excellent opportunities for the further development of the Thai foundry industry. However to make the most of this situation foundries must continue to improve their technical competence and performance. In the past the emphasis has been on bringing in technology developed elsewhere to improve and increase production such that Thai industry in general has not developed a "Research & Development" culture. However, earlier this year it was announced that the Thai Automotive industry is ready to move on to focus on R&D and Design. The Thai Board of Investment stated that it was revising its investment policy towards R&D and technology projects. Toyota, Mitsubishi and Honda were all said to be planning to develop research centres in Thailand. Toyota was considering a 5 billion Baht R&D investment with a focus on materials development [3]. It is against this background that this short article takes a look at the current and future research situation in the Thai cast metals industry.
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