TAMI, C.C. Wang: We are a bridge between South-East European companies and our members

C.C. Wang, President of the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI),

for South-East European Industrial Market magazine

Present the Association activities in Europe and particularly in South-Eastern Europe, including Bulgaria. How do you estimate the Taiwanese Machine Tools business in Bulgaria?

TAMI was founded in November 1945. Throughout the past 70 years, TAMI has played a key role in the Taiwan’s machinery industries, where the machine tools sector is among the leading areas of development. Among the 2800 members which TAMI has nowadays, there are more than 1000 companies in the machine tools and the related components sectors.

Being oldest historically, TAMI is also the leading machinery and machine tools manufacturers’ association in Taiwan today. It treasures all the opportunities in offering with enthusiasm the best support to its members.

Bulgaria is a new market for Taiwanese machine tool builders. Since 2013 TAMI has been participating in the Mach-Tool Exhibition in Poland with its members every year. The event is an excellent platform to extend our presence on the South-East European market.

If a Bulgarian or a South-East European company would need assistance to establish or support a partnership with Taiwanese manufacturers how would your Association help?

TAMI is willing to serve as a bridge connecting South-East European companies and its members. The world’s second largest machine tool trade show TIMTOS, organized by TAITRA & TAMI, is an example of that. This year’s edition was held from March 4-9. It’s an important platform for companies to expand their business. Most of the major machine tool companies from home and abroad participated in the show. We sincerely invite Bulgarian buyers to keep visiting its future editions.

What are the perspectives for a future business development?

Since the launch of Industry 4.0, many machinery manufacturers have transformed their sale models. They are now not only producing machines but also selling software and new services. This new emerging business model has elevated Taiwan’s machinery builders to become production service providers because of their vital role in smart manufacturing as the System Integrator (SI).

We are now not only equipment suppliers, but also systems integrators. We transform from single machine manufacturers to multi-machine manufacturing-process integrators.
The 2018 Taiwan Survey of machine tools predicted that production value will grow up with business conditions on the export and the domestic market. The production value in year-to-Dec. 2018 was USD 4700 million. This was an increase of 9,5% in comparison to the same period in 2017.

Due to the uncertain international situation investments were down in late 2018. However, we remain conservative but optimistic for 2019.