City hosts twin machinery expos

Two exhibitions, one on machine tools and metalworking and the other on manufacturing parts, opened yesterday at the Sai Gon Exhibition and Convention Center in District 7 until tomorrow.

The exhibition on machine tools and metalworking technology, Metalex Viet Nam, will bring together 500 well-known brands from 25 countries and territories, said Duangdej Yaikwarmdee, deputy managing director of the organiser, Thailand Reed Tradex Company.

The exhibition is displaying new machinery and technologies in welding, factory automation, molds and dies, wire and tube technology, control measurement, tools and tooling and many other areas.

The fourth Exhibition on Supporting Industries, which is co-organised by the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) in HCM City and the HCM City Investment and Trade Promotion Center (ITPC), will feature 100 Japanese and domestic companies, mainly in the automobile, motorcycle and electronics industries.

Tetsusaburo Hayashi, JETRO executive vice-president, said more than 850 Japanese companies were operating in Viet Nam.

Because they depend a great deal on imports, the companies need locally sourced feedstock and parts to reduce costs.

“Viet Nam ranks lower than its ASEAN neighbours in local content rates for Japanese firms in these countries,” he said.

Viet Nam should speed up the support industry development to raise competitiveness of the companies operating within the country.

Tran Tuan Anh, deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, said the support industry plays a very important role in the country’s industrialisation and modernisation process.

The developed support industry would help create export products with high competitiveness and contribute to reducing the trade deficit.

The event is the best opportunity for Vietnamese parts producers to find stable outlets while Japanese buyers can discover reliable parts’ producers, which will help increase Vietnamese content in manufactured products, he said.

The event also includes a HI-TECH Zone, featuring extraordinary high-tech capacities of intelligent industrial robots equipped with laser cutting and welding skills, as well as conferences and technological presentations and seminars on Viet Nam’s support industries’ development.

Around 7,000 visitors are expected to attend the three-day event. — VNS

Tags: METALEX Vietnam 2010