SR Suntour Makes Major Shifts

SHENZHEN, China (August 9) - SR Suntour is undergoing major changes. Within the space of a week, the Japanese giant in forks and components realigned its upper management and opened a new factory in Shenzhen, China. In the short term, the company is looking to enlarge its product offerings and become more competitive in the premier markets of the US, Europe and Japan. In the longer term, it is looking to expand its markets, with an especially keen eye on the 1.3 billion consumers in China. The company's new attitude was probably described best by Darrell Voss, Suntour's US director of sales and marketing, when he said, "We're back!". On August 8, SR Suntour opened a major new plant in Shenzhen China, which it will use to produce entry level suspension forks and cranksets. The facilities represent a CNY 120 million (US$14.5mn;EUR16.4mn) investment by Suntour, which controls a 100% interest in the venture, it's first ever in China. "This new factory will mainly supply China, and also Taiwan," said Daisuke Kobayashi, the new Suntour President. In front of top management representatives from Merida, Derby and competitor SRAM, Kobayashi added that some of the products manufactured in Shenzhen would also find their way to Europe, the US, Latin America and other markets - an eminently likely circumstance considering that long time customer Merida, as well as several other top Taiwan manufacturers, operate neighboring facilities within the Shenzhen special industrial zone. At present, Suntour's new Shenzhen manufacturing campus consists of a 40,000 square meter lot, two buildings for casting and assembly comprising 5,000 square meters, management offices and employee dormitories. Initial stages will involve only aluminum casting, though magnesium casting is an eventual goal for the plant. The plant is scheduled to go into production by September at the latest. By the end of the year, Suntour officials said the factory would employ around 600 employees. The factory will supplement the production of Suntour's Taiwan factory, established in 1987, which will now sharpen its focus on new products and products designed to create higher value like disc brakes, suspension seats, suspension forks and Suntour's line of components. The company's R&D and fabrication of molds, meanwhile, will remain in Japan. A full report about Suntour's new factory will be published in Bike Europe's August edition.(DF)