As ASEAN's largest auto producer and export hub, Thailand has the largest auto parts market in Southeast Asia. Not only domestic auto repair factories need auto parts when providing repair services for C-end consumers, but large local auto manufacturers and foreign auto manufacturers all need to use a large number of auto parts.

Previously, Thailand was the largest exporter of Japanese cars in Southeast Asia, and Japanese cars produced in Thailand could be exported to almost every country in Southeast Asia. The complete industrial chain has attracted many leading automobile enterprises to invest and build factories in Thailand.

Stronger than BYD, it also signed a contract with WHA Weihua Group Volkswagen Co., Ltd. in 2022 to buy land and build a factory in Thailand. It is expected that the annual output can reach 150,000 vehicles after the operation begins in 2024. And this has spawned a huge auto parts market.

Although Thailand's auto industry is highly self-controlled, it still relies on foreign imports for major parts. Since 2016, China has been the second largest importer of auto parts from Thailand, with its share rising year by year.

In recent years, in order to achieve the goal of "Southeast Asia electric vehicle manufacturing center and export base", Thailand has given very strong subsidy policies and tax policy support in the import of new energy vehicles and accessories. Next, new energy vehicles will be the focus of Thailand's auto market and auto parts market.

And in the field of new energy vehicles, China has been leading the world. Thailand attaches great importance to the development of new energy and electric cars as its "national policy", which is bound to increase the import share of auto parts from China.

New energy emergency batteries, for example, have seen a wave of export peaks in recent years.

The huge self-use market + huge production market, the size of the automobile market in Thailand really makes many Chinese foreign traders "greedy". Part of auto parts foreign trade is early in the layout of Thailand's online B2B market.

Compared with BYD such a leading enterprise cooperation, most of the market into Thailand or the "retail" majority, for Thailand's local car repair factory, small and medium-sized wholesalers supply, is the mainstream auto parts exporters export to Thailand.

Jiang Orange (pseudonym), Hong seven (pseudonym) is early to see the potential of the Thai auto parts market, and the layout of the Thai market auto parts foreign traders.

But also because of the "retail" form of entry, these mainstream foreign trade traders have also encountered some large and small problems.

▌The "bulk" market increases logistics costs

Jiang Orange has been deeply involved in the Thai market for many years and has some opinions on the Thai auto parts market.

"The biggest problem in Thailand is that customers are very fragmented. Customers in different regions have different names for the same product. For example, petrol filters are called by at least three different names in Thailand."

Jiang Orange introduced, Thailand auto parts dealers large and small, there are more than 4000. And the top several purchases combined, less than 10% of the overall market share, which shows the degree of dispersion of these dealers. These, however, are the main customers of Jiang Orange.

"In fact, the dispersion of customers has caused me huge logistics costs." Jiang said that his main customers are from Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Phuket. Jiang joked that "the business is all over the north and south of Thailand". In fact, logistics delivery has always been a headache for him.

In order to ensure the delivery efficiency, Jiang Orange had to find the services of local storage companies in Thailand. The goods were dispersed in different warehouses in advance, which made inventory management extremely difficult.

"I have to keep track of data from several important warehouses in real time, so I can't make a unified deployment. Even so, I still have lost items from time to time."

In addition, Jiangorange products are often sent to the wrong warehouse due to geographical problems.

"You can't ask a local distribution person to be educated enough to understand three different names for a gas filter. Delays are inevitable."

Statistics show that by the end of 2022, there are 18.17 million cars in Thailand, about 261 cars for 1,000 people (about 214 in China), and the penetration rate of cars is extremely high. This has also caused a phenomenon, is that although Bangkok is Thailand's largest auto parts market, but in fact, there are many car repair factories in major cities in Thailand, and these car repair factories are often important customers of auto parts foreign trade businesses.

This is also an important reason for the dispersion of the Thai auto parts market.

In view of this situation, polar rabbit International warehouse service in Thailand, can effectively solve this problem. Polar Rabbit Thailand warehouse provides users with one-stop storage service, in the polar Rabbit International warehouse, all product data can be tracked. Businesses only need to send the products to the polar rabbit International warehouse, the rest by the polar rabbit International solution.

In addition, the Thai warehouse of Polar Rabbit International also provides pick-up and packaging services according to the order, which can complete the information proofreading before the goods are sent out to avoid the delay caused by personal reasons.

Previously, in order to improve the logistics experience of overseas consumers, polar Rabbit International Thailand warehouse launched preferential policies. The warehouse is located in Bangkok, Thailand, close to Suvarnabhumi Airport, convenient transportation, warehouse area of about 50,000 square meters, the maximum daily order processing capacity of 60,000 pieces. Before March 31, 2023, Polar Rabbit International overseas warehouse in Thailand signed a contract, free of 2 months of warehouse rent.

The local warehouse of "central warehouse" and "one-stop service" will effectively solve the warehousing and distribution dilemma of more sellers in the future.

▌Local prescription competition is "the pain that foreign trade can't get around"

Macro seven public in Thailand before entering the market, had many field visits, saw the prosperity of the Thai auto parts market.

"One of the biggest wholesale auto parts markets in Bangkok is Klong Thom Market, which is very busy." Hongqigong introduced that although in this wholesale market, the product types are not very rich, but it is still the first choice of many local car repair factories. Because it's obviously faster to buy things here.

According to Hongqirong, if the goods are shipped from China by FeDEx or DHL, it will take 2-5 working days to arrive in Thailand from China, and the freight is relatively high.

If you go to the third party collection company, although the price is cheaper, but the limitation to extend 7-10 working days.

"There is such a time, customers would have gone, directly to the wholesale city to pull goods."

In order to solve the logistics limitation, Hongqigong cooperated with some local storage companies, but the effect was not very ideal. The cross-treasury management resulted in unclear data, lost items and other problems, so that the warehouse management cost of HongQigong has been high.

Another foreign trader, An Yuan (pseudonym), confirmed this:

"It is OK to take DHL, FedEx, UPS and TNT to Thailand. It will take 2-4 working days to arrive. It takes 3-5 working days by EMS. And that's not even counting the heavy cargo that goes by sea."

An edge introduction, as auto parts this heavy, by sea is the main mode of transportation, generally to 15-20 working days.

The polar rabbit warehouse in Thailand, but can ensure that the inventory is complete without losing pieces, to ensure that the next day in Bangkok, other non-remote areas of the next day delivery limitation, can greatly increase the competitiveness of foreign trade merchants.

Auto production in Thailand rose 6 percent year on year to 327,900 units in February, creating a huge business opportunity for Chinese auto parts exporters and heralding a boom in auto parts exports to Thailand this year.

We hope that the services of Polar Rabbit International can help more foreign trade merchants to win more market shares in the hundreds of billions of Thai automobile aftermarket.