Conglomerate Ayala Corp. and Europe’s largest motorcycle manufacturer KTM AG, plan to double the production capacity of their motorcycle production facility in the Philippines over the next three years.
Ayala Corp. chairman and chief executive Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala said in a speech during the Department of Trade and Industry’s Investment Manufacturing Summit the planned expansion of the motorcycle production output is a part of the group’s strategy to scale up its manufacturing initiatives as the economy recovers from the impact of the pandemic.
Zobel de Ayala said the company saw a 160-percent increase in Philippine KTM sales in the first half as the pandemic encouraged growth in demand for personal transportation.
“KTM AG now sees our Philippine plant as its strategic ASEAN production hub. Together, we plan to double the plant’s capacity over the next three years.
Aside from increased domestic demand, the company’s exports of motorcycles to Asean was also expected to increase by next year.
Ayala Corp. teamed up with Austrian KTM AG in 2015 to build a motorcycle production plant in Binan, Laguna.
The motorcycle factory has manufactured more than 23,200 motorcycles, exporting 62 percent of them mostly to China.
The facility expects to export 80 percent of its production of over 12,000 motorcycles, including 21 percent to ASEAN, next year.
Meanwhile, Zobel de Ayala said the conglomerate remained committed to helping the government not only rebuild but transform the Philippine manufacturing sector for greater global competitiveness post-COVID-19.
“Despite these short-term headwinds, we reaffirm that manufacturing continues to be an area of investment interest for the Ayala Group. On a domestic basis, we believe the nation’s strong pre crisis fundamentals, so critical to sustain manufacturing, remain generally intact and will recover in the medium term,” he said.
Zobel de Ayala said private businesses could also complement the government’s efforts by creating new jobs aligned with the post-pandemic economy, helping reskill the workforce and localizing the high value, complex capabilities required for long-term national competitiveness.
“In turn, the right level of government support, available freely to all players, could accelerate or multiply the impact of our plans,” he said.
Ayala Corp. through AC Industrial Technology Holdings Inc. is also engaged in automotive and electronics manufacturing.