www.tackletradeworld.com76

FEATUREFEATURE

It’s no secret that China is no longer the number-one destination for companies who manufacture fishing tackle. While it is certainly still a stronghold,

many companies have looked elsewhere in the Far East and globally to combat the rising labour costs and increasing complications of the Chinese market.

However, no move has been more significant than the one just finalised after two years of meticulous planning and hard work – Finnish lure giant Rapala VMC Corp is moving its current Asian manufacturing units out of China. The new destination? A brand-new, state-of-the-art factory in Batam, Indonesia, that employs over 700 workers, ready to go into full-scale production in an instant.

This move is a very significant one, as all of its lure production under non-Rapala-named brands such as Storm, Williamson and Luhr Jensen will now be based here, headed up by two of the company’s most senior executives.

Arto Nygren, currently head of the Rapala Group’s three European lure factories, will be in charge of manufacturing, while Aku Valta, who previously worked as managing director of Rapala Australia, will be in charge of all brands produced in Batam.

Arto, a production engineer who has worked at Rapala since 1990, has been involved in some of the biggest hits of the company. He also previously ran the Rapala factory in Ireland in the late 1990s. Meanwhile Aku, who has relocated from Australia to Singapore for this new role, was also international sales director of the company before taking the job in Australia.

“The costs of running a business in China are escalating,” Aku explains. “We are not the first to leave

77www.tackletradeworld.com

Rapala believes that its new factory is the most modern lure-manufacturing plant in the world.

“The facility will be an ‘all-in-one-place service’ specialising in all major lure

categories…”

Is this the world’s most advanced lure factory?

and we certainly won’t be the last.“But what is more important is that this

is the biggest greenfield investment that the Rapala Group has ever made – two years in the making.”

It is expected that the company’s intellectual property is better secured in Indonesia. Also, in the future the new operation will not only be benefiting from a cost-efficient, solid supply of local labour but also of access to well-educated, English-speaking Indonesian and Singaporean professionals for managerial positions. Despite the closure of the company’s lure operation in China, some of its very experienced Hong Kong engineers will be relocating to Batam, including respected lure designers Hiroshi Takahashi and Hironori ‘KD’ Kitade among them.

One significant benefit will also be a modern new factory by its sister company VMC, a hook giant nearby in Batam, for an uninterrupted supply.

“Although the factory has been developed with sophisticated mass-volume production in mind, the focus will be on the best possible quality for price points,” continues Aku.

“The facility will be a rare ‘all-in-one-place service’ specialising in all major lure categories: hardbaits, soft-plastic and metal lures. It is investing into the latest, most advanced assembling and finishing technologies. Later on the special focus will be on local and regional needs. Examples are the popular Elbe Möresilda in Norway and classic Ragot/Raglou brands in France.”

The transfer of lure production has also led to the formation of Rapala VMC Singapore Pte Ltd. The new entity combines the southeast Asian distribution head offices with the Batam senior-management office into one major Asian hub, based in Singapore. The southeast Asia distribution is run by another 10-years-plus Rapala veteran, Swee Leong Loke, who is also now in charge of distribution for the entire Pacific area. The units continue working independently but, the one certain beneficiary of the Indonesia factory will be the nearby Asia Pacific market.

Aku adds: “We will be combining the

very cost-effective labour with the latest technological innovation and adding a bit of Rapala’s time-tested, golden lure-making tradition. That is a mix that should enable us to build a global lure-making powerhouse with the manufacturing process in all core areas in our own hands. You can expect our first results later this year, but the actual flood of new Batam-designed and Batam-produced lures will be hitting the market in 2015 and 2016, so stay tuned!”

The Batam factory can already claim its first monster hit as the hardbait bass lure Storm Arashi became an overnight sensation in the US last year. The Arashi lure series is set to be introduced internationally at EFTTEX 2014.

Significant global brands produced in Batam other than Storm, which pioneered pre-rigged soft-plastic lures, include the only global big-game brand Williamson, salmon-lure brand Luhr-Jensen and freshwater legend Blue Fox.

TTW goes behind the scenes of the world’s number-one lure manufacturer, Rapala VMC Corp, as it undertakes its biggest investment in production facilities, moving its entire Asian manufacturing operation to Indonesia to create one of the world’s most modern lure factories.

The Indonesian-made Arashi lure has become a major hit in America.