3M upbeat about Asia outlook despite crisis hitting the area
3M upbeat about Asia outlook despite crisis hitting the area
SINGAPORE (Reuters): U.S. Industrial conglomerate Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co. (3M) is upbeat about its future in Asia despite the region's economic downturn, Executive Vice President Ronald Baukol said over the weekend.
"3M is definitely operating as if these things (economic conditions) are going to be relatively difficult, but we are poised and definitely looking forward to an upturn," Baukol told Reuters in an interview.
"If there's additional downturn, we are ready for that as well."
Baukol said the company was hopeful for an economic recovery in Asia as it sees tremendous potential growth in the region.
"We hope that in 1999, there'll be some economic growth in Asia," he said.
"Certainly for the longer term, we look for Asia to continue to be a real growth engine for the world."
"It's our hope that the economies that have had the greatest difficulty over the last year-and-a-half are starting to settle and hopefully would be able to reach the equilibrium from when they would start to grow again...primarily in Taiwan and South Korea."
Baukol said the company would benefit from Asia's growing electronics sector.
"A large amount of electronic manufacturing exists in Asia and that's a definite (growth) area," he said.
He cited the telecommunications and health care sectors as the other important growth sectors.
"As Asian economies mature and develop, they are going to be wanting more and more health care products for more and more people."
Asked if the political and economic turmoil in Indonesia has affected 3M's business outlook, he noted Indonesia contributes less than one percent to the company's sales and profit.
"At the moment, Indonesia doesn't have a very great percentage of our sales and profits. We think it will not have a material downside effect," Baukol said.
He said 3M continued to see good prospects in Indonesia as the country continued to develop its infrastructure and exploit its natural resources.
As for developing economies like Vietnam, Baukol said the company "will expand as markets and new customers and conditions enable us to do so.
"We will continue to expand manufacturing as additional markets develop and of course as we bring more products into the (Vietnamese) market as well."
Baukol was in Singapore over the weekend for the commissioning of the company's new S$400 million plant.
The Singapore microflex plant is expected to reach production of one million circuits per week by April. Microflex is a flexible circuit interconnection product used to link semiconductor chips.