GM discusses Southco's core competence in Asia Mr. Frazer Teo, general manager for Asia Pacific Distribution & Diversified Markets SBU, Southco Asia Ltd

We are very proud of our corporate tradition in being a good listener of what our customers say and subsequently, deliver to them something they truly need. 棗Mr. Frazer Teo

Asia seems to have attracted the attention of so many manufacturers in various sectors worldwide. Playing a key role in such stellar performance is Southco, a designer and manufacturer of engineered access hardware solutions. With a dynamic history of growth and transformation for more than 100 years, the company has a global reach of technical sales, marketing and operation resources in Asia, committed to providing customer service excellence. In an interview conducted by International Metalworking News for Asia, Frazer Teo, general manager for Asia Pacific Distribution & Diversified Markets SBU at Southco talks about its ability to listen and connect with its customers in order to deliver not just standard products but custom-designed products for a wide variety of industries.

IMNA: What are your main metal products? Mr. Teo

: Southco is a global leader in engineered access hardware solutions around the world. We are renowned for our unparallel ability and customer-oriented approach in designing and producing best in-class standard and custom-designed products. We offer a wide range of reliable and innovative products for customers around the world and these customers come from a great variety of sectors including (and not exclusive to) industrial machinery, medical, lighting, HVAC, consumer electronics, enterprise hardware and enclosure, transportation, commercial vehicles, marine and recreational vehicles. Some of the metal products which Southco designs and manufactures and which are adopted extensively in these industries include compression latch, hinges, swinghandle, cam latch, cam lock, push-to-close latch, captive screws and ejectors.

IMNA: Please discuss the manufacturing process you are using. Mr. Teo

: In ensuring that all Southco products are of the highest reliability and quality which our customers expect, we rely on a number of manufacturing processes including zinc die-casting, stamping, tumbling, sand blasting, polishing, heading, rolling, passviation, powder coating, heat treatment, wire EDM, plunger EDM, CNC machining and prototyping.

IMNA: Do you agree that your presence in Asia is a key component in achieving your goals? Mr. Teo

: Most definitely! The Asia-Pacific region is a very important part of Southco's global growth strategy and we are very much committed to this region. The recent opening of our latest wholly-owned manufacturing facility in Pune, India, is a further testimony to our commitment to this region. We have a great network of distribution partners as well as customer and engineering support in this region to help our customers achieve their business objectives and we are very much proud of our presence here in this region. I think we have a very good understanding of what our customers and the industry here need and in return this helps us manufacture things that meet our customers?requirements within the Asia-Pacific markets. It is this local knowledge in the region combined with our global capability that has propelled us to a strong leadership position within this region and beyond. The ability to listen to and communicate with our customers well has always been Southco's core competence in Asia and elsewhere in the world. We will continue to listen to what our customers in this region tell us in order to develop even better products and services.

IMNA: What makes Southco different from other companies manufacturing such metal products? Mr. Teo

: As I mentioned, we are very proud of our corporate tradition in being a good listener oNike Air Max