Financial Times

AMW to launch spare parts plant with China
Associated Motorways (AMW) is exploring the possibility of collaborating with a Chinese company to start a manufacturing plant to build vehicle spare parts for the Pakistan market.

“Recently when I visited China, I encouraged the Chinese businessmen and invited them to set up a manufacturing plant to turn out rubber based spare parts for vehicles to export to Pakistan,” Tilak de Zoysa, Deputy Chairman and Managing Director AMW, told The Sunday Times FT.

He said the discussions are still at a preliminary stage and the products to be manufactured have not been identified as yet. “We are trying to convince the Chinese businessmen to invest in Sri Lanka to build a plant and have identified export opportunities in rubber based vehicle spare parts to Pakistan,” he said.
He said the vehicle market is quite large in Pakistan and they import all rubber based spare parts. “These spare parts have a very big demand in Pakistan, because they don’t have rubber and also because their industrial capabilities are not very high. All their rubber based products are imported and the demand for these products is very high,” he explained.

De Zoysa said the recent Free Trade Agreement between Sri Lanka and Pakistan has opened up new opportunities and the prospect of starting a joint venture with the Chinese is a prospect that the company will be actively pursuing.

AMW posted its best ever results last year with a turnover of Rs.4.9 billion, 46 percent above 2003 and a profit of Rs.255 million, which is an impressive 400 percent increase from last year.

Ajita de Zoysa, Chairman, said that the company’s broad based growth was volume driven and productivity related backed by increases in market share and better utilisation of available resources. He said AMW’s strategy is to build on strategic alliances and form new partnerships that are complementary to the existing brands.

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