Nissan Celebrates One Millionth Export From Thailand

If you're wondering why a lot of the news these last few days or weeks has been surrounding Thailand, it's because our neighbours up north have been making some pretty significant strides in terms of policy in order to grow their automotive sector. Perhaps one of the biggest milestones a factory or manufacturer can achieve is the millionth car, and this specific achievement is Nissan's Thailand cumulative export figure.

Exporting from Thailand since 1999, the Nissan plants there are responsible for supplying models to the rest of Asia and Oceania. This includes the Philippines, Australia, and Japan - the largest markets which take their markets from Thailand, as well as Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa, Vietnam, New Zealand, Dubai, and Oman. It's taken them just 20 years to achieve this in terms fo exports alone, which is a huge feat worth of celebration.

This is also around 60 years from when Nissan first set up shop in Thailand. Roughly 250 companies exist in their supply chain, and there are nearly 170,000 people in their employ. Their hard work has seen impressive growth - most recently, a 19% increase in exports for 2018 compared to 2017, and ranked fifth in automakers who export from Thailand. 

In 2014, Nissan opened a second plant at Bangna-Trad KM. 22, which is the base for local and global export production of the Nissan Navara and a recognized global Center of Excellence (COE) for that pickup. In April 2015, Nissan opened its regional R&D Test Center, located next to the Samut Prakan plants.

There are currently six Nissan models being exported from Thailand: the Almera, March, Navara, Sylphy, Teana, and Terra. This is also important to note as Thailand has sometimes been regarded as more of a hub for exporting pickup trucks and commercial vehicles alone, and this shows that Thai manufacturing is capable of much more than these offroaders.