Purbalingga produces high-quality muffler systems for motor behicles

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.