DIW director-general Pasu Loharjun said the department usually inspected about 10,000 factories annually to make sure they complied with environmental and other official standards.

But under the “Thailand Spring Up” programme signed with the NSTDA yesterday, that agency’s experts will accompany DIW officials in their routine factory inspections. They will help analyse factories and consult with them on improving their environmental, safety, and energy efficiency, as well as on how to optimise the value of their industrial wastes.

DIW will short-list about 500 of some 5,000 factories it will inspect during the second half of this year, and select at least 100 of them to join in the Thailand Spring Up scheme during the next two years.

The NSTDA will disburse funding from its Innovation |and Technology Assistance Programme to cover half the expenses but not exceeding Bt400,000 per factory. The returns to the industrial sector are expected to be 7.5 times the investments.

The project is part of the government’s policy for the DIW to change its role from an agency that governs, controls, monitors and inspects for mistakes, and issues licences to one that provides suggestions and advice to manufacturers.

That will cover production efficiency, cost reduction, energy saving, and environmentally friendly competitive operations, according to official documents released at the launch of the scheme.

NSTDA president Thaweesak Koanantakool said his agency would utilise its nationwide networks of experts to take part in DIW’s factory inspections to help manufacturers improve their efficiency and safety and environmental standards.

“It has become unavoidable that [manufacturers] have to use ‘springs’ to jump up [their competitiveness] through applying technologies that will help them reduce waste, improve energy efficiencies and environmental standards, and solve trade-protectionism problems,” he said.

“But in addition to these things, we hope to help foster innovation in the future.”

Phanit Laosirirat, adviser to the Ministry of Science and Technology, said it was preparing to take on the issue of life cycle assessment (LCA), which would affect producers who could not comply with the European Union’s standards, as they would be subject to higher tariffs when they shipped products to the EU.

According to Wikipedia, LCA is a method to assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product’s life from cradle to grave, such as from raw-material extraction through to materials processing, manufacturing, distribution, use, repair and maintenance, and disposal or recycling.