BANGKOK, Thailand – Dana Holding Corp. last week marked the company’s 20th anniversary in Thailand with a celebration that included customers, suppliers, employees, and government dignitaries.
 
Dana opened its first facility in Thailand in 1992, at the Ladkrabang Industrial Estate, to manufacture driveshafts for a single customer. Today, the company employs nearly 700 people in Thailand at three assembly facilities, including the initial plant in Bangkok and two more in Rayong.
 
Dana’s Thailand operations produce axles and driveshafts for major automakers such as Ford, Mazda, Nissan, Suzuki and Tata. Advanced driveline products made by Dana in Thailand are used in light vehicles sold domestically and exported to more than 100 countries.
 
"Thailand is growing rapidly to take a leading role in the emerging ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), fueled in large part by the expansion of light-vehicle manufacturing," said Mark Wallace, Dana’s president of On-Highway Driveline Technologies. "Dana has supported OEMs here since Thailand first emerged as a global vehicle production center in the early 1990s, and we are poised to support further growth in the decades ahead."
 
Dana has been operating in Asia-Pacific for almost 50 years, and the company’s footprint in the region currently includes 19 major facilities and four engineering centers. The company says that growth in emerging markets is a primary focus, with sales in Asia-Pacific rising to 20 percent of the company’s overall revenues in 2011.