‘Local car-parts industry best-developed in SE Asia’

FRANKFURT: Malaysia’s carparts industry has made good strides over the years and is the best-developed in Southeast Asia.

This is according to Michael Johannes, vice-president at Messe Frankfurt, the organiser of the world’s largest auto-parts and after-market trade fair Automechanika.

The event is held biennially and is now into its 25th year.

Johannes touched on the Automechanika Kuala Lumpur Trade Fair, the Malaysian edition of Automechanika to be held in March next year, describing it as the gateway to the Asean region for Messe Frankfurt.

“Automechanika Kuala Lumpur may be a smaller but of high-quality and deals with future-oriented topics.

“We organise seminars, programmes on various projects of the industry during the event and provide the latest data and information on developments taking place within it,” he said when met at the Frankfurt edition of Automechanika.

The last edition of Automechanika Kuala Lumpur — also a biennial event — saw 246 companies from 18 countries and regions showcasing their products to 5,650 visitors from 71 countries.

Next year’s event will be held under the theme, “Sourcing, Training, Entertainment”.

Within the Asean region, Messe Frankfurt stages a Vietnamese edition called Automechanika Ho Chin Minh City. This year’s event was held in April.

Johannes sees Asia as the growth centre in propelling innovations and developments in the industry and China continuing to be the mainstay of growth in the continent.

“China’s now places great emphasis on environmental protection and reducing the level of pollution, ” he said.

He pointed out that two major technical developments would have a long-term impact on the automobile industry and in turn, the auto-parts sector.

“There is great emphasis on clean vehicles and digitalisation. There will be business opportunities in the new business models, digitalisation will generate the biggest growth.