The global brand of computers Asus returns to produce in Argentina at the Parque Patricios plant of the PCArts company, after having suspended local production in 2018.
“We are the first global brand to produce in Argentina again, and we did it with the same partners as in the previous period, due to the value of knowledge transmission”remarked this Thursday the sales manager of Asus Argentina, Matías Plaul.
The only two plants that the Taiwanese company has outside of China are in Brazil and now in Argentina, where the brand and a local partner have invested US$10 million to produce in the country.
In this regard, the product manager of ASUS Argentina, Andrés Lee, remarked “From Asus the opening of manufacturing in other countries is not managed in an easy way; we have here and in Brazil, precisely because of the policies” that there are in both countries for national production.
He also stressed that PC Arts was chosen again in Argentina because “a factory involves the transfer of knowledge and not every brand is willing to do it if it doesn’t deserve it.”
Plaul added that as a global brand they have “the alternative of focusing on production or imports. The decision to return to production in Argentina is because in this country national production is a pillar.”
“The advantage of producing locally lies in the supply of parts, in the competitiveness that accompanies policies, such as Now 12, 18 and 24, which equalize prices with imported products that have zero tariffs, and in the speed of response in post-sale”, said the director of operations of PC Arts, Diego Pacheco.
The plant employs 70 people, but 25 of them work only for Asus-branded equipment.which unlike the previous experience -in the last government of Cristina Fernández- instead of having an online production, they moved to a three-stage model: assembly, testing and packaging.
This model requires further training and qualification of factory workers, that in an 8-hour shift in the assembly sector they put together an average of 35 teams.
“The installed capacity is to produce 200,000 pieces of equipment per year, so current production could be doubled.”Joaquín Buján, manager of PC Arts
A computer in this productive model is finished in a maximum of 3 hours, and in total, with a single shift of workers, the plant sends 450 machines per day to the distribution center.
“The installed capacity is to produce 200,000 pieces of equipment per year, so current production could be doubled”; commented the Industry Manager of PC Arts Joaquín Buján.
Hence, the executives of both companies see the feasibility of conditioning production to the demand of the national market.
The production data at PC Arts for Asus is part of the database of all the brand’s factories in the world, in such a way as to ensure the quality of the equipment put on the shelf.
Likewise, by having local production, “the buyer in Argentina has a local guarantee for one year, and up to three years for the service that is called out of guarantee.”
At a technological level, the machines that produce in Parque Patricios “is the same machine that is produced in China,” with some adaptations, such as the key for the letter ñ on the keyboard, which “is not Spanish, it is Latin American,” they pointed out.
80% of the equipment identified with the company’s mid-range and high-end line that are now produced at the plant go to resellers (resellers) who mostly sell the units through e-commerce platforms in all the country.
When consulted by the best-selling equipment, they indicated that the Argentine consumer, after the quarantine experience and with the installation of the hybrid model (face-to-face and remote) for both work and study, began to worry “more about the performance of the machine, about the processor, which for the price”.
They also advanced the intention of incorporating models for the corporate environment, and adding technological innovations in Argentina at the same time as in the world.
Asus produced equipment in Argentina between 2011 and 2016. Now they have resumed production with a “bigger bet than before”.
Until 2018, PC Arts, which also produces Banghó brand machines, kept both the Parque Patricios plant and the Vicente López plant in production.
The decision of the government of Mauricio Macri to lower the tariff paid by finished products to zero, taken in 2018, led to the closure of the Vicente López plant, and the reduction of the operation of the Parque Patricios plant.
The return of the Connect Plan, in general, reactivated the local production plants of computer equipment that had been closed in 2018-2019.
