Fig. 3. With more than 3200 aircraft sold worldwide, the Airbus A320 family is the best-selling-auske jetliner on the market.
line in Tianjin, China. In less than two years, starting from a green field site, the new plant was up and running, delivering 11 aircraft in 2009. This is scheduled to rise to four per month in 2011. The production line is the third for the A320 family, which in 2009 represented 400 of Airbus total production. The Airbus A320 program is also important for Trelleborg Sealing Solutions. To service demand, Trelleborg has recently built a new third production line in China for its aerospace sealing products. “With the general awareness of the high pace of
investment in China, it is sometimes forgotten that China and its neighboring countries are home to one third of the world’s population,” says Peter Nilsson, President and CEO of Trelleborg. “This means that the demand for products is driven by personal consumption. For Trelleborg, this may entail such items as advanced products and solutions for the food industry and life sciences. Above all, we are involved in the area of infrastructure, including airports and harbors, where we are transferring technology to the region.” North and East Asia is largely dominated by China, where
Trelleborg has been very active in recent years establishing new operations. Nilsson emphasises the considerable size of the region and the fact that it has a large number of cities with more than a million inhabitants well dispersed across the map. These factors represent a challenge. At the same time, demand from a large Chinese city can equal that of a medium-sized European country. “As was the case with many other companies, the
Shanghai region offered us a natural foothold,” says Nilsson. “From this base, we have expanded toward northern China. Our most recent manufacturing facility in Qingdao, in the growing Shandong province, is located about midway between Shanghai and Beijing. We currently have five wholly owned plants in China and will naturally follow this up with further facilities.” Japan is one of the world’s largest economies, but
is generally regarded as a difficult market for European countries to penetrate. “Demand in this country is mainly for high-performance
products, and the way for us to penetrate the market and grow is through our niche products,” Nilsson says. “Sealing solutions, printing blankets and selected automotive components, including brake shims and advanced vehicle boots, are examples of where we have been particularly successful in the Japanese market. We also have company
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presence, often another fundamental requirement for conducting business with major Japanese companies in other parts of the world.” The South Korean market is distinguished by such
globally successful conglomerates as Samsung and Daewoo. In the global auto-motive business, these are linked to even larger players - Samsung to Renault and Daewoo to General Motors. Trelleborg Automotive has had an established presence in the region since 2003 through a joint venture with the family-owned company KunHwa. Enormous shipyards are an important factor in the country, Nilsson says, and these drive demand for products used in offshore oil and gas extraction.
Fig. 4. In the greater China area 130 million cycles are produced each year, or 70 per cent of the world’s bicycle production.
“FPSO [floating production storage and offloading] vessels, the largest of which are built in South Korea and China, contain our advanced offshore solutions,” says Nilsson. “For those of us from southern Sweden, South Korea’s world- leading position in the shipbuilding area is symbolized by the gigantic crane that used to dominate the skyline in the Swedish shipbuilding city of Malmö.” This massive piece of equipment is now located in the
south of Korea. “This part of the world presents many possibilities and will
continue to be a focus of Trelleborg,” says Nilsson. “We rely on our dedicated employees here.” l
For more information, visit
www.trelleborg.com
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