Vipada Tangpakorn, national manager of Nu Skin, said online orders have generated a nearly 50 per cent increase in total sales from the previous year.

“The consumers can have confidence in the quality of our products and services. Our fast, accurate and accredited standards will be maintained and enhanced with the use of modern technology which will help handle the products from the company all the way to consumers’ hands,” Vipada said.

LF Logistics is one of the largest warehouse management companies in Thailand. “Thailand is the first country in which Nu Skin has collaborated with a leading warehouse management company after entering the online market.

It is expected the collaboration will help enhance the efficiency of Nu Skin’s warehouse operations to handle online orders which will increase by 300 per cent.

The move is a part of Alibaba’s ongoing commitment to enhance the visibility of Thai products on its platform to promote cross-border sales to China, said William Zhao, senior director of Asia Business Development, Tmall Group.

He said the healthcare supplement was the second most popular category on Tmall. Bird’s nest must pass Tmall Global bird’s nest standards, which have been jointly introduced by Tmall Gobal and key brand partners with support from the Edible Bird’s Nest Market Committee of China Agricultural Wholesale Market Association.

Initially, three bottled bird’s nest brands from Thailand – Brand’s, Ninest, and Twin Lotus – will join the three-day Tmall Discovery.

Alan Ao, director of Tmall Marketing, said that Tmall Discovery is a series of promotional campaigns by Tmall to help Chinese consumers reach their products around the world. The campaign this time is the first one with spotlight on products from Thailand.

Tmall is the leading cross-border B2C platform in China, offering more than 3,700 product categories from 18,000 international brands from 74 countries. Tmall is the biggest B2C e-commerce player in China with over 56 per cent market share.

There are huge opportunities in the Chinese market. By 2020, China’s online retail market is expected to be 33 per cent of China’s overall retail market. About 40 per cent of online consumers in China prefer to buy foreign/imported products. By 2017, China had become the world’s largest retail market with US$5.6 trillion sales.

There are 731 million Internet users in China compared to 739 million in the EU and 326 million in the US. As of June 2018, Alibaba had around 634 million mobile monthly active users.

Mistine success

Zhao added that Thai cosmetic Mistine had been successful after joining Tmall in August 2016 and had now become one of the top five cosmetics brands on Tmall Global.

“China’s economy is opening up to foreign brands. In the next five years, China is expecting to import products and services valued at more than $10 trillion,” said Zhao.

Gen Saito, chief executive officer of Brand’s Suntory International, producer of Brand’s, said that China was a huge market. He said the company expects to export bottled bird’s nest to China, both online and offline, worth up to Bt1 billion in the next five years. Currently, China’s bird’s nest market is worth around Bt2.5 billion.

“We have collaborated with Tmall since May this year when we opened the flagship store on Tmall. Our sales have grown 20 per cent every month,” said Saito.

However, Saito said, Thailand is a very big market for Brand’s and it is the hub of production and sales.

Niwat Sutemechaikul, the vice minister of Agriculture and Cooperatives, said that China is the largest market for exporting Thai bottled bird’s nest worth around Bt110 million. However, China’s total imported bird’s nest products from around the world were worth about Bt96 billion. There is a lot of room for bird’s nest products from Thailand. However, apart from bird’s nest, the government plans to bring more health supplements from OTOP to sell on Tmall in the future.

“This will boost by 100 per cent our total backlog, which is projects worth Bt50 billion already on hand and scheduled for delivery to our customers in the next three to five years,” said Gregory Enjalbert, the company’s vice president, Asia Pacific, Rail Control Solutions, and managing director of Thailand Bombardier Transportation, during a group interview at InnoTrans 2018 in Berlin on Tuesday.

In keeping with the demand, the company will increase the number of employees in Thailand from 600 to 700 next year and boost the number to 1,000 in 2022. Up to 80 per cent of total staff are Thai nationals, he said.

“We are investing in developing people in the country where we are expanding our market, because we believe to develop our business in the long term we have to train local staff to become experts so that they can help us drive business growth,” he said.

He added that Thailand is its most aggressive market in Asean countries, as the Kingdom is pursuing a policy to develop the country’s infrastructure, including the rail system. The company will focus on rail systems such as double track, high-speed trains, light rail, the trains, engineering system, parchments, maintenance, signal system, and other aspects.

Thailand’s Transport Ministry had announced early this year that bids for infrastructure projects worth up to Bt2.02 trillion will be invited from 2018 to 2022, of which 79 per cent of the total, or Bt1.59 trillion, will be for rail systems.

“We have the technology and staff to support all rail systems in Thailand. Our headquarters in Thailand employs 600 personnel who are experts in rail engineering systems. This helps our customers with maintenance and development of their system together. We partner our customers to take care of them through research and we design the system to support them with sustainable business,” Enjalbert said.

He added that the company continued to collaborate with Mahidol University to develop a Rail Engineering bachelor’s degree programme to create engineering support staff for the country’s growing rail system. The programme will be announced next year. Bombardier Transportation has signed a memorandum of understanding with Mahidol University to strengthen cooperation for graduate education and research in the field of rail transportation over the next five years (2018-22).

“We believe that Thailand has to develop the country’s rail system to support economic growth, which will require more transportation. Urbanisation also has changed people’s lifestyle in the city, driving increasing demand for railways. This is the key to drive our business growth in Thailand although the market still has high competition from other railway companies who are also eyeing a greater share of Thailand’s infrastructure projects,” he said.

However, the company has the confidence it can expand its business in Thailand to achieve its goal of Bt100-billion in business value in the next five years, as it has the technology, expert personnel, and relationship with its customers when they need some help in resolving a system error. The company already supports and helps them solve their problems immediately. Five years ago, Bombardier’s business value, or backlog, in Thailand was only Bt5 billion. But that has risen rapidly to Bt50 billion, which is the company’s fastest business expansion in Asean, he said.

Currently, the company has signed a turnkey agreement to construct the Pink Line and the Yellow Line monorail worth over Bt20 billion with BSR, the entity awarded the contracts. It is a joint venture between BTS Group Holding, Sino-Thai Engineering and Construction and Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding.

The company also has signed an agreement to provide Bombardier Innovia 300 Automated People Mover cars, Bombardier Cityflo Communications-based Train Control (CBTC) and system integration for the Bangkok Gold Line (phase one). The company is also providing the Cityflo CBTC solution for operation on the MRT Purple Line.

He added that the IoT devices are being used in various sectors such as logistics, healthcare, farming, and smart city projects.

The IoT technology can enhance the urban living quality as it can be applied by private or state sector to provide the security and convenience to consumers. It can also be utilised for the environment and energy management, he added.

The IoT refers to everyday physical objects being connected to the Internet and be able to identify with other devices. Many organisations in Thailand have begun to adopt the IoT technology to strengthen their operations.

The leading mobile phone service provider AIS has recently launched the nationwide enhanced Machine-Type Communication (eMTC) network, following its launch of the nationwide Narrow-Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) network last May.

The dual networks will complement each other in supporting the use of the IoT devices. The launch of the dual networks is in line with AIS vision of becoming the digital platform for Thais.

Among the benefits of the eMTC network are that it can send and receive data between mobile devices such as connected cars, and can send and receive large amount of data that exceeds NB-IoT network capacity.

The NB-IoT network supports IoT-enabled devices as many as 100,000 units per base station and with operating range exceeds 10 kilometres per base station. The network is good for supporting the stationary or slow moving IoT devices. AIS NB-IoT network has utilised the 900MHz band to provide the service, while its eMTC network has utilised the 1800MHz band.

AIS has partnered with several organisations to introduce the IoT technology to their operations, including PTT, Krotron Group and Thammasat University.

IDC Asia/Pacific released in July this year the latest IDC Worldwide Semiannual Internet of Things Spending Guide Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) (APeJ), which projects spending on the IoT to reach US$291.7 billion in 2018, up by 12.1 per cent from $260.1 billion last year.

The forecast covers the spending on all parts of the IoT ecosystem, not just devices, but also cellular and fixed networks, IoT Applications, IoT Platforms, and also data analytics software.

According to Randy Roberts, research director – IoT & telco for IDC Market Research, Asia Pacific, the total spend on IoT in Thailand in 2018 is forecasted to be $4.4 billion.

 “We visit InnoTrans 2018 to find the best technology for developing our services and our business investment in the future,” said Chaisak Srisethanil, project and engineering director of Bangkok Mass Transit System Plc, in an interview as he visited InnoTrans 2018 with The Nation on Tuesday.

Chaisak praised the event for demonstrating widespread global innovations and technology related to train systems. The one-stop nature of the exhibition allows his company to learn about the technology and compare options, to discover which among the options best suit their current and future needs.

“We are interested in high-speed train technology,” he said. “We will join in the bidding, which opens in November this year, for a high-speed train linking three international airports. We area also interested in doing a light train system that will support our business when the government opens bidding for two new routes in Phuket-Phang Nga and Khon Kaen,” he said.

More than 400 innovations from the global rail sector are on display at InnoTrans 2018 from its opening on September 18 until September 21, with 146 innovations making their international debut at the tech fair. At the unique Outdoor Display, as well as on the Bus Display, trade visitors will be able to assess 155 vehicles and, in some cases, test-drive them too. At more than 62 per cent, foreign participation remains at its usual high level. During these four days in Berlin over 130,000 trade visitors from every continent are expected to attend.

Companies and institutions from a total of 61 countries are using InnoTrans 2018 to present new or improved products, systems and offers. All the global players from the railway world are here, along with 33 of the world’s most important industrial and technical associations from 17 countries. Around two-thirds of the exhibitors are from abroad, and in particular from France, Italy and China.

Christian Goke, CEO of Messe Berlin GmbH said in a press release on Tuesday that world-wide visitors to this 12th edition of InnoTrans will find it “more concentrated, more innovative, more informative … Once again, we have broken the previous record, set in 2016, and achieved our new best-ever figures for the number of exhibitors, vehicles on display and items making their first international appearance.”

Electro-mobility is a massive trend in transportation and also features widely at InnoTrans, both in the exhibition and in the outstanding supporting programme, Goke said.

He added that the main focus of the Dialogue Forum at the Palais am Funkturm will be on Railways 4.0, the digitisation of new mobility services and Innovation Pathways 4.0, as well as the future management and control system ERTMS. It takes place under the aegis of the DVF (German Transport Forum), VDV (Association of German Transport Companies), UNIFE (Association of the European Rail Industry) and VDB (German Railway Industry Association).

Bombardier Transportation’s president Laurent Troger said that the company is proud to present its new brand identity and product design under its slogan, “Together we move”. Halfway through its five-year turnaround plan, this is a strategic next step in positioning the company for the future, he said.

At InnoTrans, Bombardier’s stand will leverage the latest digital technologies to illustrate how its high-performance mobility solutions have helped cites across the globe develop, said Troger.

A virtual reality exhibit promises visitors an immersive 360-degree journey in cities across the world, be it on the Bombardier Innovia monorail in Bangkok, a Bombardier Flexity tram in Zurich or a Movia C30 metro in Stockholm.

An interactive tool features Bombardier’s full value chain and helps customers consider the advantages of a complete mobility solution, he said in a company media release, including options for signalling, components, services, as well as operations and maintenance.

InnoTrans 2018 is on until September 21, 2018 for trade visitors, and during September 22-23 for the general public. Trades have access to all indoor and outdoor areas, while the general public can browse the outdoor displays.

Indorama Ventures Plc (IVL) launched the eco-competition to promote the most efficient use of PET materials while increasing the value of products and organisations in the long term.

Kees Rade, ambassador for the Netherlands, said: “[Ecology] has become a serious issue, as the world’s population is projected to reach 9 billion by 2050. Environmentalists have even raised awareness by creating Earth Overshoot Day. This is a day in any given year on which humanity consumes natural resources exceeding the Earth’s ability to reproduce.

“Until 1969, humanity consumed natural resources within the Earth’s ability to reproduce. After that year, we started consuming more than the planet could refill. This year, Earth Overshoot Day fell on August 1. We are consuming more natural resources and raw material due to economic growth driven by the expansion of the middle class. So we are grateful and happy that Indorama has organised this kind of event,” the ambassador said.

Suchitra Lohia, chair of Indorama Ventures, said: “This is Thailand’s largest competition in upcycle – or distinctive – design, which is one of Indorama’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects held every year.

“This year marks the seventh edition of the eco-friendly contest, aiming to create social awareness on how to intelligently and efficiently use PET materials and polyester fibre in a bid to save the Earth’s environment.”

VCOM chairman Narong Intanate said this should help increase the proportion of service revenue to 40 per cent from 35 per cent and was confident that this year’s revenue would achieve Bt1.6 billion.

“The objective of this acquisition is in line with the company’s expansion plan into IT and network security service, which should increase the company’s service revenue as well as decrease its dependency on Oracle’s products.

In addition, it is believed that this acquisition should create mutual benefits for both VCOM and I-Secure,” he said.

Culverhouse has been responsible for supply chain management since April. Based in Bangkok, he oversees the group-wide supply chain management strategy and reports to DKSH’s CEO Stefan Butz.

Culverhouse is British and has 25 years of experience with MH Alshaya, TCC Global and Tesco Group.

Butz said: “The appointment of Daniel Culverhouse ensures continuity in leadership in this central area and underlines the importance of promoting internal talents at DKSH. Dan is a seasoned manager and will ensure future excellence in DKSH’s supply chain management.”

The 750,000 square metre site would have 14 major stores, said Supoj Chaiwatsirikul, CEO of IconSiam. The development would reportedly include the longest pillar-less glass façade in the world, built with specially commissioned glass that is pleated around the building.

“We are committed to making IconSiam a new national landmark and an exciting global destination,” Supoj said. “IconSiam is bringing more than 188 ‘first-time-in-Thailand’ brands and store concepts.”

The site will include the largest Adidas Original store in Asia, the first JD sports outlet in Thailand and Nike’s first Asean branch.

Takashimaya, a Japanese department store, will open its first store in Thailand with more than 170 brands that are new to the kingdom, said Supoj.