Many of Thailand’s thousands of auto suppliers are having to turn overseas in a bid to staunch the loss from massive floods that have swept across vast swathes of the country.

One supplier told just-auto that it was rapidly moving as much equipment as possible to higher ground in a bid to protect it from swiftly advancing water that it said could be up to waist high by this evening (26 October) local Thai time.

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“Most of them might need to send some tooling to overseas countries… to produce the parts they can not produce,” investment promotion officer for the automotive sector at the Thai industry ministry, Khun Anin Meksuksai, told just-auto from Bangkok. “Some suppliers need to import goods to maintain the supply chain.”

Equally, those suppliers not directly affected by the floods – that are continuing to increase in scale – have had to re-evaluate the situation as waters of up to 3m are predicted.

“Even other companies in the automotive market that are not in the area, are not flooded, some of them need to cease operations temporarily because some of the suppliers are in the flooded area,” said Meksuksai.

“Right now the government has a plan to drain the floods from the industrial area and they plan for factories to be able to recover by mid-November. By December they plan the factories to start up their operations.

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It appears most suppliers are around two hours from Bangkok in an area close to a deep sea port, but it seems the devastating flooding has had a significant impact on the supply chain.

“I don’t think the major suppliers are in the flooded area, but they have to stop anyway – they need to find out from other suppliers,” said the ministry spokeswoman. “If it is not Tier 1 they need time to identify the smaller parts.”

Full inspection and and any necessary repair will have to wait until the waters subside – although when this will be is as yet unclear.

The ministry spokeswoman revealed the scale of Thailand’s automotive sector that employs around 300,000 people and which has up to 3,000 suppliers.