Purbalingga produces high-quality muffler systems for motor behicles

Agus Maryono, Contributor/Purbalingga

If you happen to travel along a busy road in your city and notice a muffler workshop with a sign saying Knalpot Bralink ( Bralink muffler), you might just wonder what Bralink means.

Bralink is the popular nickname for the Central Java regency of Purbalingga, some 200 kilometers southwest of Semarang.

It is also used as a name for many muffler workshops in some of the country's major cities because it is there that a traditional muffler manufacturing center is located.

Pesayangan, a hamlet in Purbalingga Lor village in Purbalingga, has been known for decades as the center of the muffler industry, and its mufflers are sold all over the country.

It's not surprising, therefore, if people also often refer to Purbalingga as the city of mufflers despite the fact that some 80 percent of the population of one million work in the agricultural sector.

It is for this reason that a giant statue of a worker producing a muffler was erected near the hamlet, as an expression of pride.

Of some 2,000 people living in Pesayangan hamlet, 90 percent make a living from this particular industry.

Entering the hamlet, therefore, you will be greeted with a "decoration" bearing mufflers of different sizes and kinds hung on the main entrance gate.

The loud banging sound of iron being cut or shaped manually is heard in almost every corner of the hamlet.

A craftsman in Pesayangan told The Jakarta Post that the muffler industry in the hamlet started in 1946 by a villager named Sultoni who initially produced home appliances such as knives, cooking jars, kettles, containers, stoves and others items made from used iron and oil drums.

"His expertise eventually inspired him to produce more and more products made of iron, including motorcycle mufflers," said Daryono, 45, a craftsman.

It turned out later that producing mufflers was very lucrative, so others were also inspired to do the same. And that was the way the hamlet eventually developed into a center for the muffler industry to this day.

The industry is not, however, necessarily large-scale or modern. It is just a collection of many cottage industries with manually operated equipment such as iron cutters, grindstones and welding tools.

Yet, its products are considered to be of quite high quality, giving them prominence in the market.

"We have sold our mufflers in almost all of the country's big cities including Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, Medan, Bogor, Semarang , Kalimantan, and Denpasar," another craftsman said.

Sudarsono, 43, a craftsman, told The Post he had been delivering mufflers of different sizes and types to the East Java city of Surabaya for years. Other producers, similarly, also received similar orders from buyers in other large cities.

Sudarsono added that with some 150 business units producing mufflers in the hamlet they could produce nearly 50,000 of them per year. They comprise car and motorcycle mufflers of different sizes and types.

"We produce to two different levels of quality, standard and deluxe quality," said Sudarsono, adding that standard items were usually made from used kerosene or asphalt drums while those of deluxe quality were made from stainless steel or galvanized steel.

A large used oil drum can be purchased for around Rp 20,000, said Sudarsono, and could produce about five main bodies for car mufflers. They still require iron piping to turn them into proper mufflers.

Mufflers of this type are usually sold at an average of some Rp 100,000 and is generally the lowest price one can find in the hamlet. The ones made of stainless steel are usually start at around Rp 250,000.

"Regarding the quality, we can give you a guarantee. We can compete with the ones made by big factories," Sudarsono assured.

For motorcycle mufflers, Pesayangan producers mostly use only stainless steel and iron piping. They produce various types, models and sizes of motorcycle mufflers. The cheapest motorcycle mufflers are sold for Rp 50,000 each. The main market for these particular products are motorcycle workshops and motorcycle spare part shops.

"I can assure you that many of the motorcycle mufflers sold in the workshops and shops, especially those in Central Java and the neighboring provinces, are made in Pesayangan unless they are originals," said Daryono.

Motorcycle mufflers, according to Daryono, are much simpler to produce than car mufflers. All they have to do is cut the metal pipe to the desired size, make a suitable muffler body and weld the them together. The muffler is then ready for sale.

Car mufflers, especially those made of used drums, are a little more complicated to produce. After cutting them into several parts as desired, workers need to smooth the surface of the cut pieces with sandpaper or grindstone before they can be formed into mufflers.