TRIUMPH IN THE EAST

Triumph recently announced that the company would move series production of all models to its factories in Thailand, leaving the UK factory to concentrate on motorcycle development and building the Triumph Factory Custom models. Alan Cathcart was given an exclusive tour of the Thai operation.

- Alan Cathcart

The February 20th announcement that the remaining slice of Triumph’s overall annual production of bikes still emanating from its UK HQ at Hinckley will shortly be transferred to its three facto1ries in Thailand, means that for the first time in the British marque’s 118-year history, all its series production models will now be built outside the UK. This will see annual production totalling around 2,000 units of the Speed Triple and Tiger 1200 - the last remaining UK-built models – joining the rest of Triumph’s range in being manufactured at its Chonburi, Thailand, plant, with only the high-end TFC/Triumph Factory Custom bikes and certain other small volume models still to be produced in Britain. This will mean around 4,500 bikes a year will still be manufactured at the firm’s Hinckley base, even after all series production manufacture has moved abroad.

John Bloor built his first wholly-owned plant in the Southeast Asian country in 2002 and since then, components have been manufactured in both the UK and Thailand and shipped back and forth between the two countries. 90% of the total of 60,000+ motorcycles manufactured by Triumph last year were built in Thailand.