ASAMA YUH JIUN INTERNATIONAL VIETNAM CO. LTD

Asama Yuh Jiun, a Taiwanese bicycle manufacturer, established a US$ 15m, 100% foreign owned company in 1999. The factory has grown into Asama’s largest production site and exports bicycles to Japan, the EU and Canada under its own brand or buyer's brands.

Increasing production costs in Taiwan and Japan induced Asama to seek a lower cost site for its production facilities. Mr. Feng, the General Manager of Asama Vietnam, toured a shortlist of countries in South-East Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. He choose Vietnam for a new production site because he concluded that Vietnam has many similarities with Taiwan 30 years ago, the culture is familiar, the infrastructure is fairly good and labor costs are relatively low. His decision to locate in Binh Duong, a Southern province near HCMC, was based on the welcoming and supporting attitude and actions of the province's leadership, which had won his trust.

In 2004, Asama Vietnam employed about 1000 workers with some Taiwanese and Chinese technicians. With these well-trained workers, ISO management and automatic machineries, the company aimed at producing one million bicycles annually in Vietnam. The factory accommodated four bicycle assembly lines, nine frame welding lines; automatic antirust treatment; automatic painting equipments which include electrostatic liquid painting and powder coating; electro-deposit equipments and three sets of automatic wheel-building and spoke-adjusting machines. The company became the largest bicycle manufacturer in

Vietnam, and in a process of localization of suppliers, it helped nine Taiwanese manufacturers of bicycle components to set up factories in Vietnam.

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